How to receive USD in Thailand: what the Wise change means and what still works
Thailand used to be the easy one. Open a Wise account, give clients your US routing number, sit on the dollars, convert when the rate looked good. That is ending. Wise now serves personal customers with a Thai registered address through a locally licensed entity, and Wise's own help article says that once you are moved, payments arriving from someone else into your foreign currency receiving details are converted to baht on arrival. You can still be paid. You just cannot hold the dollars. Before you plan around any of that, check one thing first: Wise's eligibility help page currently says it has temporarily stopped issuing currencies and account details for customers in Thailand, with no date and no explanation attached, so a new customer may not be able to get the USD details this page prices at all. PayPal is a real option but a narrow one, and we owe you a correction here. Contrary to what a lot of guides say, including this page until today, a Thai PayPal account can still receive commercial payments for goods and services. What the 2022 relaunch removed was friends and family transfers and the Payouts product. The catch is verification, which runs through a Thai national ID system, so a foreign resident of Thailand is unlikely to get a personal account approved. What is left is Payoneer, which publishes 1 percent to receive and a withdrawal conversion fee in a range of 1.2 percent to 4 percent, Wise for the cheapest conversion if you can get details at all, and a SWIFT wire into a Thai foreign currency deposit account if holding dollars matters to you more than fees do. We should say plainly that Wise pays us a commission when someone signs up through this site, and that the Thailand change is a downgrade for anyone who wanted to park dollars. It is still the cheapest way in our table to turn client dollars into baht. It is no longer a place to keep them.
By George I. · Last updated:
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Provider comparison: receiving $1,000 USD in Thailand
Using live mid-market rate as of 2026-10-12 · open.er-api.com
| Provider | Net received (THB) | Effective fee | FX margin | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WiseBest value | 33,276 | 0.77% | Mid-market | ~2 days |
| Western Union | 32,866 | 0.50% | +1.5% | ~1 day |
| Payoneer | 32,336 | 1.00% | +2.6%(est.) | ~2 days |
| Bank Wire | 31,228 | 3.50% | +3.5%(est.) | ~4 days |
| PayPal | 31,087 | 4.43% | +3.0% | ~1 day |
Receiving without converting, in Thailand
Thai banks offer foreign currency deposit accounts, commonly called FCD accounts, and the Bank of Thailand does not require inbound foreign currency to be converted. A dollar wire credited to one converts nothing, so you choose when to sell. This is what that costs. Note that the Thai inward remittance commission, reported at 0.25% with a floor and ceiling that vary by bank, is charged on top and is not modelled here. Wise is on this table too, because it can send dollars here by SWIFT whether or not you can hold a Wise balance as a Thai resident, which its own eligibility page leaves in doubt without giving a date. It saves very little: Wise publishes its Thailand SWIFT fee at $31.38 against the $35 we assume for a generic wire. The $31.38 is published; the $35 is our assumption, and the Wise row still has to guess which pay-in your client gets, so neither row can take our badge. Converting to baht through Wise costs a fraction of either, so take dollars only if you mean to hold them.
Receiving $1,000 USD as USD
| Provider | Net received (USD) | Effective fee | FX margin | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wise | 966.92 | 3.31% | No conversion | ~4 days |
| Bank Wire | 965.00 | 3.50% | No conversion | ~4 days |
Wise in Thailand: cheapest to convert, no longer a place to hold
Still the cheapest route in our table from client dollars to baht, and still the one changing under your feet. Read this part before you plan around any of it. Wise's own eligibility page, the one titled where do I need to live to hold money with Wise, currently carries this line under additional restrictions: Thailand, we've temporarily stopped issuing currencies and account details for customers in Thailand. Wise puts no date on that page. It does not say when the pause started, when it ends, or whether it applies to new customers only or to everyone, and no Thailand specific Wise article mentions it at all. Pulling the other way, Wise's separate article on USD account details does not list Thailand among the countries where they are unavailable, and wise.com/th still advertises the multi-currency account, account details from over ten countries and the Wise card. We cannot reconcile those, so we have left Wise in the comparison and are telling you instead: if you do not already hold USD receiving details, try to get them before you build anything on the numbers in our table. Note also that the restriction wording says customers in Thailand without separating personal from business, while the migration described below is explicitly for personal accounts only. Separately from that pause, Wise is moving personal customers with a Thai registered address onto Wise Payments (Thailand) Ltd., which Wise says is licensed by the Bank of Thailand to provide Electronic-Fund Transfer, E-Money, Money Transfer Agent, and FX E-Money services. That is not a banking licence, which is part of why a Thai bank can hold dollars for you and Wise soon will not. Wise's own wording on the consequence: if you receive non-THB payments from other Wise customers or into your foreign currency account details, for example your US routing number or UK IBAN, we'll automatically convert the amount to THB and add it to the THB balance in your Wise account, and relevant currency conversion fees will apply. Money you add yourself from your own overseas bank account is described as working as before, so the forced conversion targets exactly the case this page is about, which is a client paying you. On dates, use Wise's current text rather than ours. It says customers who signed up before 21 January 2026 see the changes from October 2026, and customers who signed up after 21 January 2026 are being rolled out progressively and will be on them by August 2026. The same article also says that from now until October 2026 there will be no changes to your Wise account and you can continue using it as usual, which does not sit easily with the August date. We are reporting both rather than picking one. We previously described a 3 August 2026 date pushed back at the end of July, and that narrative is not in Wise's current article, so treat it as withdrawn. The limits are the part most people miss, and on this corridor they matter more than the fee does. Wise says there will be a maximum of 30,000 THB per day for all payments or transfers made from any of the currencies in your multi-currency account, rising as you use the account more often; a maximum of 10,000 THB per transaction for any THB payments, transfers or top ups; a maximum of 750,000 THB per day for conversions out of THB; and a limit of 800,000 THB per day on outward remittances from baht into a foreign currency. At recent rates 10,000 THB is roughly 300 US dollars, so moving one ordinary freelance invoice out of Wise into your Thai bank account becomes a multi day job rather than a single transfer. Wise also says a Wise card linked to a Thai address account will be cancelled by September 2026 with a free replacement, and that the replacement cannot be used to withdraw cash from ATMs inside Thailand. Two smaller points. PromptPay is part of the new Thai setup, including receiving payments to a PromptPay ID, subject to a maximum of 10,000 THB per transaction. And Wise says non-immigrant visas such as the Destination Thailand Visa and Education visas will be accepted for the verification it is asking Thai customers to complete, which is more than the major Thai banks accept for opening an account. On our own numbers: we rederived the Wise fee on 24 September 2026 from three live quotes, which came out at 1.83 dollars fixed plus 0.587 percent, replacing an older figure that understated the real cost by about 60 percent on a 1,000 dollar invoice.
The only route that still lets you hold dollars
A foreign currency deposit account at a Thai bank is now the main reason to take a SWIFT wire rather than use Wise, and that is a genuine change in this corridor. Bangkok Bank, Kasikornbank and SCB all offer FCD accounts, in both resident and non-resident versions, and a dollar wire credited to one converts nothing on arrival. There is no blanket national rule forcing inbound foreign currency into baht, which is why a Thai bank can hold your dollars. Be careful with the conclusion though: Wise attributes its own change to the Thai regulatory requirements that come with the licence its local entity holds, and that is not a banking licence, so the fairer reading is that a bank and a licensed payment provider are allowed to do different things rather than that Wise simply chose this. What it costs: your client's US bank charges roughly $25 to $45 to send, and the major Thai banks publish an inward remittance commission of 0.25% with a floor and a ceiling, reported at a 200 baht minimum and 500 baht maximum at Bangkok Bank and a 300 baht minimum and the same 500 baht maximum at SCB. A correspondent bank may also deduct something in transit. We could not open any Thai bank tariff page, so treat those figures as reported rather than confirmed, and note that the comparison tables on this page do not model the commission at all. The other thing to know is that opening any Thai bank account as a foreigner now effectively requires a long stay non-immigrant visa. Tourist visas no longer work at the major banks, and reports for 2026 say the banks classify the Destination Thailand Visa as a tourist visa for this purpose, so a DTV on its own is unlikely to get you an account. Requirements still vary branch by branch in a way no published policy captures.
How much does Payoneer charge to receive USD in Thailand?
The default payout on Upwork and Fiverr, and the most predictable option here now that Wise is changing. Payoneer's published fee schedule, last updated 1 January 2026, prices this in two pieces. Receiving into a receiving account in a currency that is not your local currency, which is what a dollar invoice into a USD receiving account is for someone in Thailand, costs 1 percent with a 1.00 dollar minimum. Withdrawing to a bank account where a currency conversion is involved costs 1.2 percent to 4 percent. That is 2.2 percent to 5 percent all in, not one number, and Payoneer does not publish where baht sits inside that range. Our comparison models a point inside the range rather than the worst case, so read the Payoneer row as the optimistic end and check the rate Payoneer actually quotes you before you accept it. You are paying that for the platform integration rather than for the rate. Bangkok Bank publishes its own guide to receiving Payoneer withdrawals, which is about as close to institutional confirmation as this corridor gets. On speed we had it backwards and have corrected it. Payoneer's own withdrawal page says withdrawals typically reach your local bank account within one to three business days, with same-day arrival possible for many transactions, so the roughly two days our comparison models sits inside Payoneer's own stated range rather than being optimistic. Linking a bank account for the first time adds its own verification wait on top of that. Whether a foreigner on a long stay visa can open a Payoneer account in Thailand is something we could not establish either way. Nothing we found says Thai nationality is required, and nothing says it is not, so if you are not Thai, confirm before you route a client to it.
Why PayPal probably is not an option for you in Thailand
This one needs reading carefully, and we had it wrong. We previously said the 2022 relaunch removed the ability to receive payments from personal accounts in Thailand. It did not. PayPal's own Thailand relaunch FAQ says you will continue being able to use your PayPal account to shop online, as well as send and receive payments for goods and services globally as well as in Thailand. What the relaunch removed was friends and family transfers and the Payouts, or Mass Pay, product, not commercial receiving. PayPal (Thailand) Limited's user agreement, effective 20 February 2024 and so well after the relaunch, says the same thing from the other side: a personal account holder can hold balance and in certain instances receive payments, PayPal offers both personal and business accounts to customers in Thailand, and a business needs to be organised in, operating in, or resident in Thailand. So invoicing a client into a Thai PayPal account is a real option, and we are sorry for telling you otherwise. The obstacle for most readers of this page is not the account type, it is verification. PayPal's Thailand FAQ says other forms of identification which do not have a 13-digit Thai national ID number, such as a non-Thai passport, work permit, non-Thai identification card, the pink ID, or Thai Permanent Resident Permit, cannot be accepted. That wording dates from the 2022 migration and we could find nothing more recent from PayPal, but taken at face value a foreign resident of Thailand cannot complete verification for a personal account. A business account under a Thai registered company remains the route people use for freelance income. It is not undercut by the account conversion in the FAQ, which was a one off step in the December 2022 migration that turned existing business and premier accounts into the new Thailand personal account, rather than a withdrawal of business accounts from the market. On price, PayPal does publish Thailand figures and our table has been updated to match them: 4.40 percent plus a fixed fee for a cross-border commercial payment, 3.90 percent plus a fixed fee domestically, an 11.00 THB fixed fee on amounts received in baht, and a currency conversion charge of 3.00 percent above PayPal's base rate, rising to 4.00 percent on refunds and on payments sent more than a day after. Withdrawal to a Thai bank account is free at 5,000 THB or more and 50 THB below that, where no conversion is involved. PayPal's Thai fee pages still carry 2021 effective dates, so check yours in the app before you rely on them.
How much does Western Union charge to receive USD in Thailand?
Western Union's cost on this corridor is not one number, and the honest thing is to show you the range rather than pick a point in it. Third party rate trackers put the dollar to baht spread around 1.5% below mid-market, which is what our comparison models. The World Bank's remittance price survey carries more than one Western Union entry for United States to Thailand, and the entries we saw quoted differed sharply, from an exchange rate margin of roughly 2% with total cost near 2.5% on one, to a margin above 5% with total cost above 7% on another. That is not two sources contradicting each other so much as Western Union pricing different products and delivery methods very differently, and a small transfer through the wrong one costing several times what a larger one through the right one costs. We could not open westernunion.com or the World Bank pages from our side to check any of these figures directly, so read the spread in our table as the cheap end of a wide range, not as a quote. The transfer fee is promotion driven and moves. Beyond the pricing, the same caution applies as on our Pakistan page: this is a consumer remittance product scoped and priced for someone sending money to family, and a client settling a commercial invoice through it is not the use case. Price your own transfer before accepting one.
Providers not available in Thailand
Revolut: not available
Revolut does not open accounts to residents of Thailand, and the card is not available here either. A client abroad can still push a payment from their own Revolut account into your Thai bank account, but that arrives as an ordinary international transfer and you pay the Thai inward remittance commission on it. If you have seen Revolut listed as an option for Thailand, including in our own calculator before today, that was wrong and we have corrected it.
GrabrFi: not available
Thailand does not appear on GrabrFi's published list of countries where you can open an account, which is keyed to your government issued ID. We previously listed GrabrFi as supporting Thailand and were showing it in the comparison here. That was wrong, and since we carry a referral link for GrabrFi, it is the kind of wrong that we benefit from, so it is worth stating plainly rather than quietly removing.
How we calculate these figures
The net received figure deducts the provider's published flat fee and percentage fee from the send amount, then converts at the live mid-market rate from open.er-api.com minus the provider's FX markup in basis points. Rates on this page refresh hourly (ISR). Fee data is sourced from each provider's public pricing page and verified periodically. Not every provider publishes an FX spread. Where one does not, we estimate it, mark the row “est.” in the FX margin column, and exclude it from the best-value badge, so the option we highlight is always one whose spread we can source.
Fee data for this corridor last verified 2026-06-02 or later; each provider card shows its own date. · Open-source fee data on GitHub
Frequently asked questions
Can I still hold USD in my Wise account in Thailand?
Two separate things are going on, and you should know about both. The first is that Wise's own eligibility page currently says, under additional restrictions, that it has temporarily stopped issuing currencies and account details for customers in Thailand. Wise gives no date for that, does not say whether it covers new customers only or everyone, and no Thailand specific Wise article explains it, while wise.com/th still advertises the account and the details. We cannot resolve that from the outside, so if you do not already hold USD receiving details, find out whether you can get them before you rely on anything else here. The second is the migration. Wise is moving personal customers with a Thai registered address onto a locally incorporated entity licensed by the Bank of Thailand, and Wise says that once you are moved, payments arriving from someone else into your foreign currency receiving details are converted to baht on arrival and charged a conversion fee. Money you add yourself from your own overseas bank account is described as working as before, so the restriction targets client payments specifically. On timing, Wise's current article says customers who signed up before 21 January 2026 see the changes from October 2026, and customers who signed up after 21 January 2026 are being rolled out progressively and will be on them by August 2026. The same article also says that from now until October 2026 there will be no changes to your Wise account and you can continue using it as usual, which does not sit comfortably alongside the August date, and we are reporting both rather than choosing. We previously described a 3 August 2026 date pushed back at the end of July, and that is not in Wise's current text, so treat it as withdrawn. The move is keyed to the registered address on your account rather than your nationality, which is worth knowing if you are a foreign resident, and Wise says non-immigrant visas such as the Destination Thailand Visa and Education visas are accepted for the verification it is asking Thai customers to complete. Check your own account rather than planning around a date you read here.
Can foreigners use PayPal in Thailand?
Yes for a Thai national with a national ID, and probably not for a foreign resident, and the reason is verification rather than the account type. We had this wrong until today and said personal accounts could not receive at all. They can: PayPal's own Thailand FAQ says you can send and receive payments for goods and services globally as well as in Thailand, and PayPal (Thailand) Limited's user agreement, effective 20 February 2024, offers both personal and business accounts to customers in Thailand. What the 2022 relaunch removed was friends and family transfers and the Payouts product. The barrier is that verification runs through Thailand's national digital ID system, and PayPal states that identification without a 13-digit Thai national ID number, including a non-Thai passport, a work permit, the pink identification card or a Thai Permanent Resident Permit, cannot be accepted. So if you are a foreign resident of Thailand, a personal account is unlikely to be approved. A business account under a Thai registered company is the route people use, and its stated eligibility is being organised in, operating in, or resident in Thailand. That wording on identification dates from the 2022 migration and we found nothing more recent, so confirm it before you build a plan on it.
Do I pay Thai tax if I work remotely for a foreign client?
Probably yes, and probably not for the reason you have been reading about. Almost every article on this topic is about remitted foreign income, because that is what changed in 2024 and what generates the arguments. That is likely the wrong rule for you. Under the Revenue Code, income from work performed in Thailand is Thai source income, and Thai source income is taxable whether it is paid to you in Thailand or abroad and whether or not you ever bring it into the country. Source follows where the work is done, not where your client sits or where the money lands. Thai advisers make the point directly: working in Thailand while being paid into an overseas account does not make the income foreign source. So if you are physically in Thailand doing the work, the ordinary reading is that none of the remittance timing arguments help you. The remittance rules apply to genuinely foreign income, such as work done abroad, a foreign rental property or an offshore portfolio. Two things people get backwards. Thai source income is not switched on by the 180 day test: that test decides whether you are a Thai tax resident, counted cumulatively across a calendar year and on any visa, which is what brings remitted foreign income into scope, while Thai source income is assessable even if you stay under it. And separately from tax, Thai labour law is reported to treat any paid work performed in Thailand as requiring a work permit, even when the employer and the clients are abroad. We are not able to tell you which side of these lines your particular arrangement falls on, and it is worth an hour with a Thai tax adviser rather than an afternoon on an expat forum.
What is the current state of the rule on money I transfer into Thailand?
Unsettled, which is itself the useful answer, and we had one detail backwards. Revenue Department orders Por. 161/2566 and Por. 162/2566 apply to assessable income brought into Thailand from 1 January 2024, and they work like this. Clause 1 of Por. 161 covers a person who is resident in Thailand in the tax year in which foreign source assessable income arises, and who brings that income into Thailand in that tax year or in any later one. The income is then assessable in the year it is brought in. The Revenue Department's own question and answer on the two orders sets out the same two elements, and answers directly that if you were not in Thailand for 180 days or more in the year the income arose, you do not pay Thai personal income tax on it even when you later bring it in. So the residency test sits on the year you earned, not on the year you transferred, which is the opposite of what this page used to say and matters a great deal to anyone who earned while non-resident and moved to Thailand afterwards. Por. 162/2566 adds that clause 1 does not apply to assessable income arising before 1 January 2024, so pre-2024 income sits under the older treatment. Since then a relief measure has been drafted that would exempt foreign source income remitted in the year it was earned or the following calendar year, which would matter to anyone timing transfers. It needs Cabinet approval, Council of State review and publication in the Royal Gazette, and when we checked the Revenue Department's own list of newly issued law in September 2026 there was nothing of the kind on it, so it is not law. We are not able to tell you why it has not moved. We previously said here that it was stalled for want of a government, and that was wrong: Thailand has had a sitting elected government since spring 2026, so whatever is holding the measure up, it is not that. So it is drafted, widely reported, and not in force as far as we can tell. Do not plan around it as though it were settled, and do not assume it is dead either. Verify the current position before making a decision that depends on it.
Can I open a USD account in Thailand?
Yes, and it is now the main reason to take a wire instead of using Wise. Thai banks offer foreign currency deposit accounts, commonly called FCD accounts, in both resident and non-resident versions, and Bangkok Bank, Kasikornbank and SCB all publish them. A dollar wire credited to one converts nothing, so you hold the currency and choose your own moment to sell it. The Bank of Thailand's exchange control page says residents may deposit foreign currency received from abroad, such as revenue, service fees and foreign investment, with no limit on the amount and no end of day balance cap. Physical banknotes are the exception, and the cap there is a Bank of Thailand rule rather than a bank product term: deposit of foreign currency notes and coins is allowed up to the amounts brought into Thailand or obtained from authorized banks or non-bank FX licensees, or up to 15,000 dollars per day per person. One trade off to know about: the FET form that banks issue is a record of converting foreign currency into baht, so money that sits in an FCD unconverted does not generate one, which matters if you are building a paper trail for a condominium purchase. The practical obstacle is not the FCD account itself but the underlying bank relationship. As a foreigner you now generally need a long stay non-immigrant visa to open any Thai bank account, tourist visas no longer work at the major banks, and reports for 2026 say the Destination Thailand Visa is treated as a tourist visa for this purpose. Requirements vary noticeably between branches, so ask at more than one if the first says no.
How much does my Thai bank charge to receive money from abroad?
The figure reported consistently across the major banks is an inward remittance commission of 0.25% of the amount, with a floor and a ceiling. Bangkok Bank is reported at a 200 baht minimum and 500 baht maximum, SCB at a 300 baht minimum and the same 500 baht maximum. Because of that floor and ceiling, small transfers effectively pay a flat minimum and large ones pay a flat maximum, which means the percentage cost falls sharply as the amount rises. On a thousand dollar invoice you are paying the floor, and on a twenty thousand dollar payment the same ceiling applies, which is why wires suit large irregular payments and suit small monthly invoices badly. A correspondent bank in the middle may also deduct its own fee before the money arrives, which nobody warns you about in advance. Our comparison does not model this commission or a correspondent deduction, so treat the wire figures there as covering the sending side only. We could not open any Thai bank tariff page from our side, so verify the current commission with your own bank.
What is a FET form and do I need one?
It is Thailand's closest equivalent to the inward remittance certificate that some other countries issue, and it is the document to ask for at the time rather than chase later. A Foreign Exchange Transaction form is issued by the receiving Thai bank and documents the inbound money, the conversion into baht and the stated purpose. Thai law firms and property sites report consistently that the bank prepares one at 50,000 dollars or more in a single transaction, and we should be straight with you about that sourcing: the Bank of Thailand's own exchange control page does not use the words Foreign Exchange Transaction form or FET anywhere, and does not state that threshold, so treat the 50,000 figure as reported rather than confirmed and ask your own bank what it applies. What the Bank of Thailand does publish is a different and higher rule: for transactions in an amount equivalent to 200,000 dollars or above, the authorized banks need to request the customers to submit supporting documents, except where the authorized banks have performed the know your business process on the customers. Below whatever threshold your bank uses, it will normally issue a credit advice or a bank letter instead if you ask. You want one because it is the proof of inbound foreign funds that comes up when buying a condominium, and it is useful evidence if the Revenue Department or immigration ever asks where money came from. Note how that interacts with holding dollars: because the form records a conversion into baht, money parked in an FCD account and never converted will not produce one. Separately, banks are reported to require a purpose to be stated on inbound remittances regardless of size. Make sure your client's payment carries something like payment for services rather than gift or family support, because the purpose code follows the money and a wrong one is awkward to unpick later.
Written by George I. (20+ years in international payments). Last updated: .
Fees are estimates from publicly available pricing. Verify with your provider before transferring. Nothing on this site is financial or tax advice. How we make money.