Find the Best, Cheapest Way To Send Money to Thailand

Over the past three months, we compared 43 providers for transfers to Thailand from a wide range of sending countries and found that on average Remitly was most often the cheapest provider (in 28.0% of the searches).

But Remitly might not be available in the country you're sending money from, and it might not be the cheapest for your transfer to Thailand as the provider's pricing change depends from country to country and changes over time. This means it's always best to launch a live comparison to find the cheapest provider for your transfer.

Cheapest Ways to Send Money to Thailand

The cheapest way to send money to Thailand is almost always to make an international bank transfer to a local bank account in Thailand via a specialist money transfer provider, which you can pay by debit card or local bank transfer.

Services such as Wise, Remitly, and Instarem are good examples of such solutions; they offer reasonable exchange rates very close to the mid-market rate and apply transparent and low fees. These solutions will be much cheaper than making an international bank transfer to Thailand with your own bank or using PayPal, both of which come with higher costs and take a considerable margin on the exchange rate when converting your money into Thai bahts.

Fortunately, there are dozens of excellent options out there. Run a search on Monito's real-time comparison engine to compare them all and find the best way to send money to Thailand now:

What’s the Best Way To Send Money to Thailand?

Regardless of whether or not your recipient in Thailand has a bank account, you will have plenty of good options to choose from. It’s sometimes worth checking the money transfer giants Western Union and MoneyGram to see if they currently have good offers, as they have great coverage of every region in Thailand and offer very fast transfers. However, other companies such as Remitly, Wise, CurrencyFair, and SingX, which offer transfers to many pay-out options (cash pick-up, airtime top-up, bank transfer, bill payment), will usually offer you a better deal.

Of these, Remitly was by far the cheapest money transfer service for sending money to Thailand from abroad (it was cheapest on nearly half of Monito searches in 2022):

Suppose you're sending a considerable amount to Thailand (let's say you are, for example, an expatriate moving to Bangkok for a few years and want to take part of your savings with you, or you need to buy property in Thailand). In that case, we usually recommend using a foreign exchange broker instead of a transfer platform. Most big FX companies will support the Thai baht as receiving currency; we recommend the services of Currency Solutions, OFX, Currencies Direct, Halo, or Frontierpay.

You can compare these companies with Monito's comparison engine above to see which will give you the most attractive quote.

Whether you're an expat living in Thailand and regularly need to send money from your home country to Thailand, or you left Thailand to live and work abroad and transfer money back to Thailand to support your family, comparing money transfer solutions before your transfers can help you save a lot on transfer fees and poor exchange rates.

If you're still using your bank to transfer money to Thailand (or a traditional cash-to-cash money transfer operator or — even worse — PayPal), you're likely paying 3% to 5% too much for each transfer. Fortunately, there are a lot of solutions to transfer money to Thailand with transparent fees and great exchange rates; you simply need to compare your options before each transfer for the exact amount you need to send.

If you live in the US, it's worth keeping in mind that you cannot use Zelle to send money to Thailand, as the app doesn't work for international transfers.

How To Send Money to Thailand

Sending money to Thailand is easy. As we saw earlier, the best way is to send a bank transfer from your home country, to a bank account in Thailand.

This can be done by instructing a SWIFT transfer via your bank (usually pricey) or using a savvy online money transfer provider (a much smarter choice for most people). Another popular way to pay for your money transfer is by debit or credit card (a payment method accepted by most major providers such as Remitly and Wise, but not by banks).

Either way, in a typical transfer scenario, the money you send will end up in your beneficiary's local bank account in Thai bahts. To instruct such a transfer, you'll need to make sure you have all the necessary information about your recipient:

Information Needed To Send Money to a Bank Account in Thailand

• Name of the recipient: The name of the recipient's bank account holder.
• Name of the recipient's bank: The name of the recipient's bank in Thailand. Often, you will be able to select the bank's name in the list; in other cases, you have to enter the name yourself. E.g. The Thai Credit Retail Bank.
• SWIFT/BIC Code: The SWIFT (also called BIC) code is a unique code attributed to each bank often used in international transfers. E.g. BKKBTHBK.
• Account number: The bank account number of the recipient in Thailand. E.g. 7632234874.
• Address of the recipient: For legal reasons, you need to communicate the exact postal address of the recipient in Thailand.

To send money to a bank in Thailand, you'll need some information about the recipient's bank details to set up your transaction. Banks in Thailand don't use the IBAN system, so you will have to enter the bank account number of your recipient (usually a ten-digit number) and the SWIFT (or BIC) code to identify the bank in which your recipient has his account. Sometimes, money transfer operators will allow you to select the bank's name in a list instead of asking you for the SWIFT code.

In addition, for legal reasons, you will need to give the postal address in Thailand of your recipient (not the address of the bank).