What are some alternatives to Wise for transferring money from the USA to a Thai bank?

@Moon *****

you are right it's low with pro. Many that are not familiar will miss that. Just did a apples to apples comparison with wise vs cbpro. $200 btc buy was $1.19 fee vs wise transfer fee of 31.70฿ to send the equivalent.

@Shane *******

good to know. Was able to get a Thai bank account set up this trip so it’s moot at this point, but I’ll pass that on to friends that still use other methods.

@John *********

"How to avoid bad exchange rates at the ATMs and in shops?

Let’s come back to the guy on the petrol station. If you travel to a foreign country with another currency the cash machine will to ask if you want to withdrawal with currency conversion or without currency conversion. Here you should always use the without conversion option.

Without conversion means, that your local bank will exchange the money. This will give you a good exchange rate. If you choose instead the with conversion option (= dynamic currency conversion), you will get a guaranteed exchange rate, but the ATM/bank can add an up to 10 percent service fee. This is where you loose money. But you can avoid this by using the without conversion option."



This bank ATM allows 30k withdrawal



So what I do is use Coinbase debit card, zero fees, take out 30k baht without conversion, get market rate like wise, and only pay 220 baht for that 30k..then I take that cash and deposit into my Bangkok bank

@Shane *******

just double checked, even with letting the home bank do the conversion, I was coming out a bit ahead transferring the money even with the fees refunded, but I will definitely double check the numbers when I’m changing within Thailand. Passing the info on to a friend arriving in the kingdom tomorrow as well.

@John *********

oh ok

@Jim **********

When using Wise, don't do any transfer of money directly from your UK bank account to your Thai bank account . Doing that, you're wasting time and money (Shitty exchange rate + transfer fees from your UK bank).

Instead, just open a £ wallet and a Thai Baht wallet on your Wise account (easy process that takes only seconds).

Then, transfer the money needed from your UK bank to your £ wallet on wise. Your transfer will be fast (minutes sometimes) and FREE (cause Wise uses his UK branch to do it, so it's a local transaction for them).

Then, on your Wise account and every time the exchange rate is at your advantage,, you convert money from your £ wallet to your Thai Baht wallet and store there as much Thai Baht as you want.

From now on and when you need to transfer some Thai Baht to your Thai bank account, you use your Wise Thai baht wallet to do so. The transfer will be fast (minutes) and at a flat rate (30,89 Thb) regardless of the amount sent.

By doing all that, you save on time, money, exchange fees and headaches.

@Eric ******

that's what done when was in UK loaded up account just transfer when need to

@Jim **********

you will get an email from wise telling you how long they expect it to take. It can vary from seconds to hours.

@Tony ********

2nd day now. Never had this before always instantly shows up

@Jim **********

I don't understand what you mean by it not showing up. In the wise app it's got all the tracking information.

@Terry *******

the problem is very consistently NOT great rates at all. The 'fee' is all but irrelevant, especially for larger transactions. All that matters is the exchange rate. I have thai account so no ATM charge as a Canadian. But Remitly takes as much as 3.5%, so always inferior to Wise. The day Remily is worth it, i'm in. That is not the case at present. But i prefer keeping my money for myself. It's worth keeping an eye on though, it's a cutthroat business and one can leap ahead of the other or offer preferred rates on high traffic....