How to pay in Thailand: cash, cards and the PromptPay QR

Cash runs the stalls, the night markets, the small family shops, and many taxis and tuk-tuks. Cards work at hotels, malls, restaurants and the big attractions. A visitor needs both, and a third thing besides. At the counter in between (a café, a food court, a convenience store) you’ll see a PromptPay or Thai QR by the register, the code residents pay from their banking apps. That third one is the catch: the code is wired to Thai bank accounts, and a foreign banking app, a foreign card or a phone tap generally can’t pay it.

PromptPay, Thailand’s national real-time payment system, launched in 2016 and has been in public use since 2017. Registering links a Thai bank account to a phone number or a citizen ID, and that’s what lets someone receive money. Thai QR Payment is the scan-to-pay side, where people pay by scanning the code in a mobile banking app. At a printed code the payer types the amount and confirms; a code on a terminal or a screen may already carry it. What stops a visitor is the account behind the app, since banks generally open accounts for long-term residents. Paying a PromptPay QR is a separate thing from registering for PromptPay, though. A payer needs something that can reach the QR, and no PromptPay ID of their own.

1. 01

   Verify in the app first

   Before your first payment in Thailand, the app asks you to verify, and verifying unlocks Pro Pay, the part of the app that scans and pays PromptPay codes. Load your stablecoins while you're there, so all the first counter asks of you is a scan.

2. 02

   Find the PromptPay or Thai QR

   The app's own sheet for Thailand says to look for two logos, PromptPay and Thai QR. The code sits by the register, taped to the counter, or on the cashier's screen. If a place shows no code, it's a cash or card stop.

3. 03

   Scan and approve on your phone

   Open the app, scan the code, and approve the payment on your phone. A licensed local partner pays the merchant in baht.

Who holds the money matters here. Yodl is a wallet you control rather than an account someone else holds for you. There’s no Thai bank account to open and no local wallet to sign up for. Only you can move your stablecoins, and nothing leaves until you approve it on your phone.

You’ll see two names on the same code. PromptPay is the national service, and Thai QR Payment is the QR you scan to pay over it. Why a foreign app can’t just point at that code is what the PromptPay guide is about.

Cash for the stall, a card for the mall, and the QR for the counter in between.

Cash still matters at small vendors, local markets, street food stalls and anywhere rural, so plan the ATM trips. Thai ATMs charge foreign cards a flat local fee on every withdrawal, on top of whatever your home bank adds, so fewer, larger withdrawals cost less. When the machine offers your home currency, choose baht. Cover the PIN and take your card, because Thai ATMs hand over the cash first. At the airport, change only a little for the ride in; the counters there are typically weaker than the booths in town or an ATM.

Cards are the easy layer where they work: Visa and Mastercard, plus UnionPay and JCB, at hotels, malls, restaurants and attractions, though Amex is refused in some places and some shops add a surcharge or set a minimum. Apple Pay and Google Pay work at a contactless terminal, but not at a stall and not on a PromptPay QR, because a phone tap is a card payment.

In Bangkok the split is easy to read. Malls and chains take cards, and 7-Eleven takes Thai QR and cards and is a good place to break a large note. The street-food lanes and markets run on cash or the local QR, and ride apps are paid in the app or in cash. The trains are their own question: the MRT takes a contactless credit card at the gate, the BTS Skytrain still runs on its own card and single tickets, and the getting-around guide has the detail.

The mistakes that cost visitors most here are small ones. Several small ATM withdrawals pay the flat fee several times over. A card or a phone tap won’t stand in for the QR, which wants a bank transfer, so don’t plan a market morning around tapping. And if you reach the first counter unverified, you’ll be setting up the app at the register when you meant to pay.

Three costs follow a visitor around here: the flat fee on each foreign-card withdrawal, the home-currency offer at the machine, and the surcharge some shops put on cards. It’s the repetition that adds up. The sample below, marked as such, runs one bill both ways to show the shape of it. Treat it as an illustration rather than a quote.