Hey guys - am going to Thailand for Xmas and having a thai bank account as many of you have mentioned isn’t an option. Not loving the 200 THB atm fee. Other than cash - any other good options to optimise for exchange rate and minimise for fees? I am UK based.
Thanks!
Hi Nicola, can you share any more specific indication ? maybe you can check you history and add the bank brand .
Thanks in advance.
7-11 only accepts Visa card, and with a Revolut being a Mastercard, you cannot pay for items at the till with Revolut.
VISA seems to be king in Asia compared to Mastercard (allthough I have sucessfully used Mastercard also).
Hi Mike, I am going on vacation to thailand and was thinking to change some EUR to THB even before going there and pay all the hotels with the revolut card on which I would already have THB. do you now if I would avoid fees this way?
thanks
emil
Hi,
Well, generally you have a good idea, and I wanted to use it myself.
There are two things you should consider with this;
When you change EUR to THB within the Revolut app you generally dont get particularly good exchange rate, as Revolut applies a certain percentage of “fee” on so called “illiquid currencies”. For unknown reason they consider THB illiquid, and apply this fee. This means you are loosing some money to begin with.
When using card in Thailand that has been issued in Europe, such as Revolut, you have a problem, but a problem can be managed if you are careful.
When you will want to use Revolut with THB on your account, you will be asked in many cases if you want to pay with EUR or with THB. Always use THB in this case, as you will be charged a lot more if you were to choose EUR.
Other issue are the ATMs. Just because you have THB on your Revolut account as a currency, doesn’t make your card appear “local” all of a sudden. This is still a European card, and when you try to use it in the ATM, you will still be asked to pay the withdrawal fee of “220 or 250” or whatever it is this days. On top of that Revolut only gives you 200 EUR worth of free withdrawals, so if you go over that, Revolut will charge you extra from their end.
Considering cash is king in asia, Revolut is unfortunately not a particularly great, especially in Thailand. On the other hand, if you plan to use the card in places like hotels, airlines, major retail shops and so on, Revolut will give you a certain peace of mind, knowing what rate exactly you got when you bought THB currency even if it is not the absolute best exchange rate you could potentially get.
What I do is take EUR cash, go to one of the best exchange shops in Bangkok that give you almost Forex rates, and use cash most of the time. If I need to use a credit card, I usually choose to use my own bank Mastercard or Visa, as I have noticed this two companies have better exchange rates for Thailand compared to Revolut.
There are places where Revolut is much better (eg. Singapore, Hong Kong, USA, Korea,…)
I hope this helps.
Have fun !
Most 7-eleven and Family Marts I went did have a minimum requirement of 300฿ before you could pay with card.
Since you usually do not buy so much in those stores take cash with you. 
thanks a lot Mike! its crystal clean now
Hey mike, what about using revolut in bali, do you have any experience or advice on whether it is a good idea or not.
sorry. No experience from Bali
That’s good to know since I’m going there for a week in may.
I do a lot of transactions to Thai Banks (Bangkok Bank, Siam Commercial Bank and some more). No issues so far, Bangkok Bank being very fast in procesding. No unusual fees detected.
7-11 doesn’t accept common visa wave or contactless payments which you’ve already been using in your countries. You must use a local bank issued e-wallet on a smartphone or on a card. Bring enough cash and exchange in any money exchanging booth is the best way to save money. Credit card payment usually gets a 3% additional fee in a small restaurant, hotel, hostel, or a private convenient store if it accepts credit cards. (They will tell you before taking your credit card.) We stayed in Thailand for 56 Days and only brought 1500 GBP cash with us. We thought during covid-19, contactless is widely accepted. That was a mistake. We needed 3000 GBP more cash after carefully calculating. Fortunately, our flat owner allowed us to transfer Thai Bahts to her bank account, so we did save a lot of handling fee by transferring money via Revolut.
I’m not sure where you are based. I live in the USA, when I go to thailand If I need to withdraw cash from ATM I use my SOFI debit card, the don’t charge you any fees and they reimburse you right away the fees that the thai ATM charged you. To spend the card I just used my THB balance on my wise card. Since I opened my revolut since few days now I will do the same with the revolut card since I saw they give you better deal than wise to convert thb in weekdays.