PromptPay

PromptPay is the real-time retail payment service of Thailand. It allows individuals, businesses and government agencies to send and receive Thai baht instantly, at any hour, by using a simple identifier, such as a mobile phone number or national identification number, in place of a bank account number. It began operating for transfers between individuals in early 2017.

The service was created under the Thai government's National e-Payment Master Plan, a programme to reduce the use of cash and cheques and to bring more of the population into the electronic payment system. It is operated by National ITMX, the interbank switching company owned by Thai banks, under the oversight of the Bank of Thailand. PromptPay is now the dominant means of account-to-account payment in the country and one of the most heavily used real-time payment systems in the world relative to population.

A customer registers an identifier with their bank, usually through mobile banking, and links it to one account. Individuals can use a citizen identification number or a mobile number; businesses use a tax identification number; and identifiers for e-wallet accounts and for billers were added later. The links are held in a central directory at the system operator.

To pay, the sender enters the recipient's identifier or scans a code. The sender's bank queries the directory, shows the recipient's name for confirmation and sends the payment through the central switch, and the recipient's account is credited within seconds. Each transfer is a push payment that is final once made. A tiered fee schedule set at launch made small transfers free, and Thai banks soon afterwards waived fees on digital transfers generally, which removed cost as a barrier for consumers.

• Transfers between people. The original service, used for everyday person-to-person payments.
• Government payments. Tax refunds and welfare benefits are paid to the account linked to a citizen's identification number, which gave households a strong reason to register and made PromptPay the channel for government payments.
• Merchant payments by QR code. Under the Thai QR Payment standard introduced in 2017, a merchant displays a single code that customers of any bank can scan. A static QR printed on a card is enough for a street vendor, which spread QR payment acceptance far beyond the reach of card terminals.
• Bill payment and requests. Billers receive payments with reference data for reconciliation, and a request to pay function lets a payee send a payment request to the payer's banking app.
• Bulk and business payments. Companies use the system for payroll and supplier payments in place of cheques.

Thailand has been active in connecting its system with those of its neighbours. In April 2021 PromptPay was linked with Singapore's PayNow, allowing customers of participating banks to send small amounts between the two countries using only a mobile number, the first such connection between two national fast payment systems. Separately, the Bank of Thailand and other central banks have set up interoperable QR arrangements under which a traveller from one country can pay a merchant in another by scanning the local code with a home banking app. Such arrangements operate with several Asian markets, including Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore and Japan.

These projects are part of a regional effort among Southeast Asian central banks to make the instant cross-border payment routine for tourism, small trade and remittances, with settlement in local currencies instead of through the dollar.

The Bank of Thailand supervises the system under the Payment Systems Act of 2017, which gives it powers over designated payment systems and licensed payment service providers. National ITMX runs the central infrastructure and directory, and the participating banks and e-money providers supply the customer-facing services. Policy direction has come jointly from the central bank, the Ministry of Finance and the banking industry association, which coordinated the launch and the fee waivers.

PromptPay changed payment habits quickly. Registrations run to tens of millions of identifiers in a country of about seventy million people, and digital transactions per person have risen many times over since launch. Cash use for small purchases has fallen in cities, cheque volumes have declined, and small merchants who never accepted cards now take electronic payments at no cost. The system is frequently cited as a contribution to financial inclusion and, together with electronic tax invoicing introduced under the same master plan, to bringing more commerce into the formal, recorded economy.

Instant, irrevocable transfers have been exploited by scammers, particularly call-centre gangs who persuade victims to move money and malware that takes control of banking apps. Stolen funds are passed through accounts opened or rented for the purpose, each held by a money mule. Thailand has responded with an emergency law on technology crime in 2023 that allows banks to share information and freeze suspected accounts quickly and criminalises the sale of a mule bank account, and with central bank measures including biometric verification for larger mobile transfers, limits on the number of devices per banking app, and a central system for reporting and tracing fraudulent transfers across banks.

• Bank of Thailand: PromptPay
• National ITMX