INBOUND TRANSFERS — BANKING ROUTES
The Bangkok Bank New York branch comes up constantly on Thai expat forums — if you have spent any time there, you have probably seen this mentioned as a cheaper alternative to a standard international wire: send money to Bangkok Bank’s own branch in New York, and let them forward it internally to your Bangkok Bank account in Thailand.
It is a real, currently-operating service — but the way people actually use it today is not quite what Bangkok Bank’s own marketing page describes, and a 2025 change to how these transfers are coded matters a lot if you are relying on one as proof of funds for a visa.
Bangkok Bank runs an official page for this called “Transfer money from the US via Bangkok Bank’s New York branch,” positioned as cost-effective, secure, and fast — for USD transfers equivalent to ฿1,000,000 or less per transaction. Above that amount, the special pricing goes away.
The mechanism: a US sender’s funds move through the US ACH network to Bangkok Bank’s New York branch (acting as a correspondent bank), which then credits your Bangkok Bank account in Thailand directly — no SWIFT correspondent chain, no separate intermediary bank. You do not need to open your own account at the New York branch — you are simply directing your US bank to send to their routing number (026008691) with your Thai account as the ultimate destination.
Bangkok Bank’s page describes this as requiring the “International ACH Transaction (IAT)” format. Here is the practical problem, confirmed repeatedly across forum threads going back to 2020: since Bangkok Bank tightened its rules in late 2019, it will only accept a transfer in true IAT format, and almost no US retail bank or brokerage actually sends in that format through online banking.
What works instead, and is what most people on the forums actually report doing: request a domestic wire from your US bank or brokerage, using Bangkok Bank NY’s routing number and account details exactly as you would for an ACH transfer. Bangkok Bank’s New York branch will accept and forward a domestic wire the same way, and it still qualifies for the cheaper NY-branch fee schedule below — you just pay your own bank’s domestic wire fee on top (commonly around $25, though several brokerages waive it above an asset threshold, and Fidelity and Interactive Brokers users both report free or low-cost international wires directly to a Thai bank as an alternative, bypassing this route entirely).
If your bank cannot do a domestic wire to that routing number either, Bangkok Bank has a slower fallback: their “Foreign Remittance” service, where your US bank issues a cheque or bank money order made out to the NY branch, mailed with a paper application form. One detailed forum account put the full round-trip at about 11 days.
Straight from Bangkok Bank’s current published rates, for transfers equivalent to ฿1,000,000 or less — the tier this service is built for — fees scale from ฿100 up to USD 15 + ฿100 depending on the amount sent. For transfers of ฿1,000,000 or more, the discount disappears and you are back to essentially standard wire pricing: USD 15–20 plus 0.25% of the transferred value (minimum ฿200, maximum ฿500) — the same receiving-fee structure Bangkok Bank applies to an ordinary SWIFT transfer.
That threshold is exactly why this matters for two specific use cases and does much less for a third: retirement visa funding (฿800,000) and marriage visa funding (฿400,000) both fall comfortably under the ฿1,000,000 line, so you get the cheap tier — likely around USD 15 plus ฿100 from Bangkok Bank’s side. A condo purchase will very often exceed ฿1,000,000, at which point this route offers no real pricing advantage over a normal wire from any provider — see our condo purchase guide.
WORTH KNOWING
In a documented email response from Bangkok Bank to a customer, shared on a Thai expat forum in May 2025, the bank confirmed that transfers under ฿1,000,000 sent via the New York branch route are now processed through what it calls an “API Gateway” — and this changes two things: you no longer get an automatic SMS alert when funds arrive, and your passbook will show the transfer coded as “TPP” (PromptPay Transfer/Top-Up eWallet) instead of “FTT” (Foreign T/T).
That FTT code is exactly what proves a deposit came from abroad. Here it is confirmed directly by Bangkok Bank, not just inferred from forum reports: if you have not signed up for Email Credit Advice in advance, you will need to bring your passport and passbook to the branch where you registered for direct deposit to get a proper Credit Advice document as proof of an international transfer receipt.
If you are funding a retirement or marriage visa this way, do two things well before your Immigration appointment: sign up for Email Credit Advice on your Bangkok Bank account ahead of the transfer, and confirm you have the Credit Advice document in hand rather than assuming the passbook entry alone will read as foreign.
For a retirement-visa or marriage-visa lump sum, sent as a domestic wire from a US bank that does not already offer free international wires, this route can be genuinely the cheapest option available. If your brokerage already offers free or low-cost international wires, or you are moving anything above ฿1,000,000, the special pricing here stops being a meaningful advantage and it is worth comparing directly against our OFX review instead.
One more case worth knowing about even if it does not apply to most readers: some US government agencies still make monthly pension and benefit payments that do not use the IAT format at all — Bangkok Bank’s New York branch holds a specific waiver from the US Treasury allowing it to keep relaying those payments directly into Thai accounts. See our pension guide if that is your situation.