Fighting ignorance is hard! Two steps forward, two steps back…
All you need is a Non-I visa. All you need is a Non-I visa. All you need is a Non-I visa.
Earlier I mentioned the retirement visa (which you get after opening the bank account, not before) just for a reductio ad absurdem. There are also plenty of foreigners on marriage visas without work permits who need bank accounts for their financial proof. … As well as plenty of foreigners (e.g. myself) who open bank accounts with no long-term visa intent. All you need is a Non-I visa.
It might be interesting to speculate why your bank branch always asks to look at your work permit. Is it the same branch each time? Is there a law that if you have a work permit, then the permit is inspected for some tax purpose? Perhaps the bank officers at that branch feel that in inspecting the work permit unnecessarily, they are somehow “going the extra mile” to do their job well. (Not strange at all here. :dubious: )
I do concur that checks are rare; need for them is largely replaced with bank transfers, cash transfers via post office or 7-Eleven, carrying piles of banknotes from one place to another!, or ATM cards. (ATM cards can be issued for savings accounts.)
VERY hard in my experience, although if I knew the right people it would probably be easy(or go to the right bank). But even for most citizens it is damn near impossible to open a regular bank account, there was a large shitstorm when the local version of social security went to direct deposit only.
The banks not only ask for proof of employment but confirm and will question whether your employment pays enough! There are a lot of requirements that would even trip up many citizens.
However this country absolutely loves capricious and arbitrary bureaucracy that can be of course waived for friends and family or for favors, so if you know the right person like I assume most foreigners are guided to you’re all set!
*My wife opened an account as a child, this is the only reason she has a bank account. There was some kind of trip up where a bank officer noticed she had never provided the required documentation(being a child) and she vigorously argued for the right to keep her account rather than reapply for one because it is so hard.
Just to be perfectly clear, I have personally opened single-name(*) bank accounts in Thailand with neither work permit nor long-term visa in the 1980’s, in the 1990’s and in the 2000’s, in both Bangkok and upcountry. I personally know several foreigners with bank accounts and no work permit; in each case they opened the account before getting a long-term visa.
(One of these friends has trouble dealing with Thai bureaucrats and is frequently asked for “expedition payments” that obviate the “need” for documents not required from others. I wonder if his experience has similarities to yours? :dubious: )
Would there be some way to turn this question into a friendly wager for money?
(* -I’ve also opened multi-name acccounts but never a “business” account. Is it possible that’s the confusion?)
a gas or electricity bill. Since those were addressed and sent to our landlord, I also needed
a copy of our landlord’s passport and carte de sejour
a letter from our landlord declaring we lived in our apartment AND our rental contract
three months of statements from our previous bank
our employment contract
three months of payslips each
Fantastically, in France, many jobs will require you to have a bank account before you start working. So you move to the country, then find out you need old bank statements, old payslips (I never kept payslips before living in France!) that you probably didn’t bring with you, and so on. Plus like many people we were just living somewhere temporary after first arriving, so we had to approach this woman who was only renting to us for a few weeks and politely ask for all this paperwork…
Then changing your address requires getting all that proof of residency stuff again.
I think some of the banks now offer “passport accounts”, which don’t require a kilo of paperwork. It also used to be very time-consuming and expensive to close a French bank account, but they recently did away with most of the account closing fees.
Curious: does the bank provide this service? “I bank officer, acknowledge the identity of this person for banking purposes because a bonded notary (me) vouches for their identity.”
!!! What if they don’t want to give it up, unlike Rick Astley?
Thankfully you can often get these online in bigger companies. But I think if I brought in French documents to a US bank, they wouldn’t know what to do with them.
I have thrice opened (and thrice closed) Swiss bank accounts. Piece of cake. I have opened an account in Denmark. Again a piece of cake. I have a number of accounts in both Canada and the US. Never had a problem opening them. But the son of a friend of mine had an account at the Band of Montreal here and when he moved to Toronto he tried to open an account at a Toronto branch of B of M. They wanted a birth certificate. So he produced a birth certificate. What’s this? In a foreign language (French), no can do. He went to a credit union next door and opened an account there. Piece of cake. Go figure.
Although off topic, I can’t resist telling a story. This happened over 45 years ago and might not happen today. An incoming graduate student went to a local bank to open an account. What would you like your initial deposit to be, sir? Well, I was hoping to start with a small overdraft until my first TA cheque arrives. Better see the manager, sir. Tells story to manager. Manager asks how much he wants. Five dollars. Even in 1965 this was a trivial amount of money. Bank manager looks startled, then opens his own wallet and gives him a five dollar bill and says pay it back when you can! Which he did.
No trouble opening accounts in any of the countries I have lived in, though I found I didn’t need it in Italy, as I was in the Navy, and once a month I would buy enough Lira to last for rent, utilities, etc. Cash was much the way to go then. A million Lira sounds like a lot, but my rent was 800 000.
Jordan and Turkey it was required to have an account, and not too onerous, except that when leaving Jordan, the telephone company gave us a refund check that my bank wouldn’t cash, and we went through hoops to clear that, but it also had nothing to do with opening the account.
Turkey started charging monthly fees, and when I left, there was less than $30 dollars, so I just left. Still get statements in negative balance and ads from them.
Austria so far has been simplest and I may just keep that account active.
All of them required personal visits and in the UK even though my wife is British, for me to be on the account at all required yards of paper.
Spain was simple, once I had my NIE, good thing I held on to it when i returned to the States 20+ years ago. Now that I have bought a house in Spain, we are almost citizens. We retire next year.
Not as far as I know; we were told we had to bring it with us. Bringing our passports and having the bank officer walk over to a copier and make the copy wasn’t an option. French banks are nuts, though. Many don’t dispense money, at all. Some DON’T ACCEPT DEPOSITS. And if you go to any bank other than your home branch, even for simple things, you’ll constantly be asked why you aren’t at your home branch. And they’re randomly closed in the middle of the day - and I mean outside of their leisurely lunch breaks - for hours at a time, which you don’t know until you arrive to see a “fermeture exceptionelle” sign stuck to the door. I count the day that I knew I’d never have to deal with a French bank again as one of the happiest of my life.
Most landlords are pretty used to it; you also need all this proof of residency when going to deal with the préfecture and other little bureaucratic matters. If you have tenants, you probably assume they’ll ask at some point. If your landlord straight up refused, though? I don’t know what you could do.
We moved from France to the UK, and arrived at the bank with a briefcase full of paperwork. The bank officer kind of stared before asking for all of four things in order to open our account.
Good for you. Again, I said “generally” it is not possible. Please look up the word. You know people who did not need a work permit to open an account. I know people who were rejected for not having a work permit. I did open accounts in the 1980s myself without a work permit, but at that time I was on a US State Department passport and did not need a work permit for my activities in country.
Anyway, to get away from the highjack and answer the OP, yes, it can be easy to open an account in Thailand.
I apologize to Dopers tired of this question, but placing the truth on record is a fetish of mine.
I’m glad you’ve put me on Ignore, Sam, so I can finally correct this without you re-posting this mistake yet again.
All that a foreigner needs to open a bank account in Thailand is a non-I visa. I know about a dozen foreigners who’ve done so and only one (you) who’s been asked for a work permit. Why you are asked for the work permit I don’t know. My best guess is a conversation like
Sam, opening my account: “Would you like to see my work permit?”
Bank officer: “Uhh, OK. Why not?”
That your claim is absurd is logically clear as I explained earlier: Most people with retirement visas open bank accounts at least two months before they apply for the retirement visa, to satisfy the “financial proof” requirement for the visa, and retirees are not permitted to have work permits. (I notice you’ve added “retirement” to your claim but the retiree is never asked to return to the bank to validate his account!)
All that a foreigner needs to open a bank account in Thailand is a non-I visa. One foreigner (Sam) was, supposedly asked for his work permit. I wish he would say “I had to show my permit” rather than the false statement “permits are ‘technically’ or ‘generally’ required.”
