HSBC Bank - Bangkok Branch

[Crash999]

I've got an HSBC Powervantage account. It's quite nifty- it lets you hold multiple currencies and their Internet banking services are very convenient. My account was established in HK and I rememeber that there are monthly fees if the account drops below a certain level (I think it was around US$2500 from memory). I haven't gotten any literature on new monthly fees, though.

 

Had a Thai Farmers account in the past and closed it. No real problems with the bank but didn't find their services especially good- things may have changed, though, as this was around 2 years ago.

 

I now have a Bangkok Bank account and a Siam Commercial account. Got the BB account because I sold my car and the buyer had a BB cashier's check- the easiest thing to do was open up an account with it. Never use it though and will probably shut the account down if I go ahead and buy a condo or another car.

 

My daily use account is with Siam Commercial bank. The branches perhaps aren't too friendly but they have quite a lot of cool services. I have signed up for telebanking which lets you do virtually anything from the telephone. Something that is particularly neat is that you can shut down your ATM card over the phone if you lose it or it gets stolen. I also use telebanking to transfer cash from savings to checking when I pay my rent, for example. The service is fully-automated and very user-friendly. Telebanking sounds like a nightmare when one thinks of the very unfriendly automated answering services use by customer support services, but it's actually a breeze.

 

Most ATMs have this service but I find that not many foreigners use it- the ability to pay bills via ATM. I pay my AIS, CAT, and Visa bills all through the ATM and will soon switch to paying my rent that way too. The ATM prints out a mini receipt and I staple it to my bills to use as evidence of payment.

 

All in all, using all of SCB's services has allowed me to avoid having to walk into any of their bank branches (something I hate doing) for probably a year or so.

 

Cheers!