Money in Thailand.

Thailand's currency is the baht (THB), written ฿ and split into 100 satang you'll almost never handle. By law it's what you pay in. A few hotels and tour desks quote US dollars, but you settle in baht at a rate they set, which is usually worse than paying in baht from the start. Get your baht from an ATM or a money changer once you land.

Notes come in ฿20, ฿50, ฿100, ฿500 and ฿1,000, with coins in ฿1, ฿2, ฿5 and ฿10. The ฿1,000 is the biggest note and the one ATMs mostly dispense, so you'll often need to break it. Keep a stash of ฿20, ฿50 and ฿100 notes, because street vendors, songthaew drivers and market stalls frequently can't change a ฿1,000.

In the cities your card handles the big stuff. Visa and Mastercard are taken across hotels, malls, supermarkets, chain cafés and mid-range and upmarket restaurants in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Phuket and the like. UnionPay is widely accepted too, thanks to the many Chinese visitors, while American Express is patchier, so don't make Amex your only card. Step off the tourist grid, into street food, wet markets, songthaews, small guesthouses and rural shops, and it's cash or QR only. Both debit and credit cards work anywhere Visa or Mastercard is: a debit card is what you'll lean on at ATMs, while a credit card usually adds better purchase protection and, on the right travel card, no foreign-transaction fee.

Where you'll meet friction is the surcharge. Some smaller shops, tour desks and guesthouses add 2 to 3% for paying by card, most often on Amex and foreign cards, to cover the processing fee. It's legal here and rarely worth an argument, so keep enough cash for those places and put everything else on the card. Separately, your own bank may charge a foreign-transaction fee on every payment abroad, which is exactly what the calculator below helps you dodge with the right card.

Contactless is worth using where the terminal takes it. Wherever a reader accepts tap-to-pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay work too if they're linked to a Visa or Mastercard, with your phone handing over a one-time token instead of your real card number. Coverage is good in malls, hotels, airports and chains, thinner at small vendors, and Bangkok's MRT and Airport Rail Link now take contactless bank cards straight at the gate.

You don't need a brick of cash, but you do need some every day. Cards and QR cover hotels and bigger restaurants; cash is for street food, markets, songthaews, tuk-tuks, tips, temple donations and anywhere rural or island. Around ฿1,000 to ฿3,000 on you is a sensible float, more if you're heading somewhere without ATMs. When you withdraw, take a large amount in one go, because every Thai ATM charges a flat fee per foreign-card withdrawal, and pulling more, less often, is the single biggest way to keep that cost down.

If you've brought cash from home or want to change a larger sum at once, Use a proper money changer rather than a bank, a hotel desk or the airport arrivals counter. The gap between the best and worst rates can be 3 to 5%, which on a few hundred dollars is real money. Two things decide whether you get a fair deal: where you change, and the notes you bring.

Locals pay for almost everything by scanning a PromptPay QR code, Thailand's national real-time payment system, and it's now the default at restaurants, 7-Elevens, markets, taxis and attractions. For foreign visitors, though, it's the one payment method that mostly doesn't work directly, because native PromptPay needs a Thai bank account.

Most visitors never need this. But if you're paying a hotel or villa deposit, sending money to family, or funding a longer stay, the rate you're quoted is rarely the rate you get. Most of the cost isn't the visible fee. It's a markup buried in the exchange rate, often a few percent you never see itemized.

The mid-market rate is the real mid-point you'd see on Google, and it's the benchmark a fair transfer should track. Specialist services like Wise and Instarem land within about 1% of it and pay out in baht straight to the main Thai banks (Bangkok Bank, Kasikorn and SCB), usually within a day. A high-street bank wire can quietly cost several percent once the rate markup and correspondent-bank fees are counted, and it takes longer.