How to open a company bank account in Thailand in 2026

Yes — a foreign-owned company can open a corporate bank account in Thailand, and newly registered companies do it every week. What has changed is the effort. Since the Bank of Thailand tightened anti-money-laundering and know-your-customer rules in 2025, in response to the fraudulent "mule account" problem, banks have applied tighter KYC and source-of-funds checks to new corporate customers, and press hardest where risk factors are present. Nobody publishes a processing time for this. In our experience a month from a complete application to a working account is a fair planning allowance, sometimes longer. A cross-border ownership structure usually means more verification, because the bank has people and entities it cannot check against Thai records — the depth follows the risk profile, not the nationality on its own.

None of this makes the account a lottery. The document set is predictable, the branch requirements are knowable in advance, and the answers to the bank's questions — who owns the company, where the money comes from, and what the business will do — can all be prepared. Incorporation itself is the fast part: the Department of Business Development's published service standard for registering a limited company is one hour at the counter, and its DBD Biz Regist platform approves the filing on payment of the fee. The 7–10 business days we quote is our own end-to-end estimate — name reservation, drafting, shareholder signing, and the source-of-funds evidence where it applies — not the registrar's processing time.

This guide covers the documents, who has to appear at the branch, the timeline, how to choose a bank — and the step founders most often underrate: remitting the registered capital from abroad and keeping the bank record that proves it arrived.

Why is the bank account the slowest step for foreign-owned companies?

Registration is a filing; the account is a relationship. The DBD must register a company that meets the legal requirements — the mechanics are on our company registration page — but no Thai bank is obliged to accept a customer. Every application passes through compliance screening, and since 2025 banks have wanted to see a properly registered, genuinely operating Thai business before they open anything.

Foreign ownership adds a second layer. Where shareholders or directors are foreign, the bank must verify people it cannot check against Thai databases, understand the ultimate beneficial owners behind any corporate shareholder, and satisfy itself about the source of the funds. Applications involving directors or shareholders from sanctioned or high-risk jurisdictions face significantly more scrutiny and, occasionally, refusal.

Government policy points the same way. Central Registrar Order No. 2/2569 has since 1 August 2026 required Thai shareholders to evidence the source of their subscription funds on the incorporations the DBD has singled out — incorporation with a foreign minority shareholder among them. It replaced Orders No. 2/2568 and 1/2569. The evidence covers both sides of the payment: three months of statements for the shareholders' accounts the money left, a prescribed investment explanation letter, and a statement for the account the director or managing partner used to receive it.

What documents do Thai banks typically ask for?

The core set is consistent across the major banks; validity periods and additional requirements differ. Bring:

• The company affidavit: the DBD certificate showing directors and signing conditions. Published freshness windows vary by bank and by product — Bangkok Bank's account pages ask for a certificate dated within one month, Kasikornbank within three months, and SCB within six on the foreign-currency deposit documentation — so an affidavit issued within the last 30 days is the conservative choice that satisfies all of them.
• The Memorandum of Association and the company objectives: the bank reads these to confirm a real, permitted activity.
• The shareholder list: the Bor Or Jor 5 (BOJ.5), which the bank uses to review the ownership structure. Know its limit — the DBD says so itself, in a December 2023 notice from its Legal and Academic Affairs Division titled "A copy of the shareholder list, or BOJ.5, is not a document evidencing shareholder status": the registrar's receipt of a BOJ.5 is not a registration, is not a certification, and creates no shareholder rights, because the registrar's duty is only to receive the list and publish it for public inspection under Civil and Commercial Code section 1020. The BOJ.5 is a list copied out of the company's own share register as it stood at the shareholders' meeting, so a bank testing beneficial ownership may go on to ask for that register or further information on the ultimate owners.
• A board resolution to open the account: minutes resolving to open an account at the named bank and branch, naming the authorised signatories and their signing conditions — singly or jointly, with any per-transaction limits.
• Passports of the directors and every signatory: originals at the branch. Kasikornbank, for example, requires a foreigner's passport to have at least 30 days of validity remaining.
• The corporate seal: bank forms usually ask for the seal "if any", so bring it where the company has one and its signing condition or the bank's documentation requires it — used exactly as registered.

Some banks add items of their own — typically a lease agreement or photographs of the office, or a work permit where a foreign signatory already holds one. And expect questions, not just documents: source of funds, expected turnover, what the company actually does. Prepare short, consistent answers in advance: answers that do not match the documents invite further questions, and further delay.

One quiet prerequisite: the affidavit must match reality. If a change to the directors or registered address was never filed, the application stalls at the mismatch. Keeping the statutory record current is exactly what corporate secretarial work exists for.

Who has to appear at the branch?

The application starts at a branch. An authorised person attends with original identification and asks the bank to open the account; that step is not done online or from abroad.

What happens after it depends on the role, and it differs by bank. Kasikornbank publishes the clearest version of the split. An authorised person who will not sign for payments or withdrawals may confirm their identity through K PLUS, within 15 days of the branch request. Anyone who will sign for payments or withdrawals has to attend a branch inside the same 15 days, so the bank can capture their specimen signature. Other banks set their own process, so confirm yours before booking flights.

For most newly registered companies the practical answer is unchanged: where the directors are also the signatories, everyone is going to a branch, and one coordinated visit with originals in hand remains the efficient pattern. But the rule to plan around is not "everyone must appear" — it is everyone who signs for money must appear.

If the day-to-day operator cannot bind the company, banks accept a power of attorney. Kasikornbank asks for one bearing THB 30 stamp duty where the payment signatory is not the person authorised to bind the company; that is its requirement, not a rule common to every bank. Either way it adds paperwork and another point for the bank to review, so many founders keep signing authority with the directors at the start.

How long does it take, and what changes the timeline?

No Thai bank and no regulator publishes a service standard for corporate account opening. Around a month from a complete application is what we allow for a newly registered company, sometimes longer — a practical estimate from our own files, not a legal deadline or a bank commitment. Four things move the needle:

• The shareholding profile: a Thai-majority company with Thai directors gives the bank the least to verify. A foreign-majority register, layered corporate shareholders, or owners the bank must check across borders give it more, and that tends to show up as a longer review — though no bank publishes a comparison.
• The people: signatories physically present with clean documents move quickly; a missing signatory or a stale affidavit restarts the clock.
• The structure behind the company: in our experience BOI-promoted companies meet less friction, the promotion certificate evidencing a vetted and substantive project — though no bank publishes BOI status as a reason for a lighter review. Treaty of Amity companies typically open the account once the Foreign Business Certificate has issued; see our guide to setting up a Treaty of Amity company.
• The branch: applications are assessed by branch staff applying the bank's risk criteria, so the same file can move at different speeds at two branches of the same bank.

The account comes earlier in the chain than many expect: it can usually be opened on the registered company and the signatory's passport, often while the signatory is still on a Non-B visa, with the work permit following. A few branches prefer to see the work permit first — confirm before booking.

Which bank should you open with?

Bangkok Bank, Kasikornbank (KBank), SCB and Krungsri are the usual candidates for foreign-owned companies, and the honest answer is that none of them is "the best". Entry costs are trivial everywhere — Krungsri, for example, publishes a THB 10,000 minimum opening deposit for a current account — so price is not the deciding factor.

In our experience what actually differs is the branch. Discretion over new corporate customers sits with branch staff applying the bank's risk policy: a branch that regularly onboards foreign-owned companies will process your file with far less friction than one that sees such an application twice a year. Choose a branch on that basis: one that is convenient to the registered office, experienced with foreign shareholders, able to conduct the KYC interview in English, and able to offer foreign-currency accounts if needed. And weigh the internet banking platform — your team will live in it daily.

An introduction through your lawyer or accountant does not override compliance. What it does, in our experience, is get the file to a branch that has handled foreign-owned applications before.

How do you remit the registered capital from abroad?

Two stages, and conflating them is where founders go wrong.

The first is statutory. Thai company law requires the directors to call at least 25% of the par value of the shares subscribed for cash (Civil and Commercial Code section 1110), and that money to be paid before they apply to register the company (section 1111). That payment necessarily happens before any corporate account exists — it goes to whichever account is nominated to receive subscriptions, often a director's. This is normal, not a defect, and where Order No. 2/2569 applies the DBD expects to see it evidenced on both sides. What matters is that every payment can be tied to the shareholder who made it.

The second stage is funding the registered company from abroad, and that is what the corporate account is for. The Bank of Thailand places no obstacle in the way of the money itself — non-residents may freely transfer funds into Thailand for direct investment — so the work is in how the transfer is made and recorded.

Send the capital in foreign currency and let it convert to baht in Thailand. Baht may be remitted freely as well — this is about the strength of the record, not what the law permits. Ask the receiving bank in advance how to reference the transfer so it is recorded as an investment in the company's share capital, and ensure that the sender matches the shareholder named on the Bor Or Jor 5.

There is no minimum size at which a bank starts documenting an inward remittance: it issues evidence of the foreign-exchange transaction as a matter of course. What varies is the document — an FET form, a credit advice, or the bank's own confirmation letter — so ask which one you will receive before you remit, and keep it. Two Bank of Thailand thresholds sit above that, and neither normally bites at incorporation scale:

• USD 200,000: from 29 December 2025, Bank of Thailand Circular No. 8434/2568 requires banks to verify supporting documents for foreign-currency inflows of USD 200,000 or more, unless the bank has already completed its know-your-business review of the customer. Prepare large-transfer paperwork in advance.
• USD 10 million — the repatriation rule: foreign currency received from abroad at this level or above per transaction must be brought into Thailand and then sold to a bank here or deposited into a foreign currency account, within 360 days. The threshold was raised from USD 1 million in January 2026, so a company capitalised at the usual THB 2–5 million is nowhere near it.

Whatever the amount, collect the evidence the bank issues for every tranche of capital.

Why does the bank's record matter years later?

Because it is the contemporaneous proof that your investment entered Thailand in foreign currency — and later processes are built on that proof. Whichever document your bank issued, that is the one to keep.

• Immigration capital tests: under Immigration Bureau Order 327/2557, a non-promoted company sponsoring foreign staff faces a test of THB 2 million in fully paid-up registered capital per foreigner — THB 1 million where that foreigner is married to a Thai national — alongside the four-Thai-employees ratio. Both are administrative criteria for the one-year extension of stay, and in practice for the work permit that goes with it, rather than conditions written into the work permit itself. Officials commonly want evidence the capital was genuinely paid in, and where it came from abroad the bank's remittance record is the cleanest evidence — our work permit and Non-B visa page sets out the full prerequisites.
• Dividends and taking money out: repatriating dividends, capital reductions or liquidation proceeds is freely permitted once Thai taxes are settled, but the bank buying the foreign currency will ask what the money is and where it came from. The inward-investment record can establish in one document what might otherwise take weeks to reconstruct.
• Property, one day: the same records gate personal purchases — a foreigner registering a freehold condominium must show that the purchase funds were remitted from abroad in foreign currency. An FET form, a credit advice or the bank's confirmation letter all serve, provided the document names the buyer; see our guide to the 49% foreign condominium quota.

What happens after the account opens?

Two steps make the new account genuinely usable.

First, internet banking — a separate application, not an automatic feature. Expect a fresh document set for it: Bangkok Bank's published requirements for its BIZ iBanking service, for example, include a registration certificate issued within the past 90 days and sealed board minutes stating the registered accounts. Decide the approval workflow deliberately: who prepares payments, who approves, what limit applies to each user.

Second, the accounting handover. From the first month, the account feeds into the statutory books. This means reconciling statements monthly, applying withholding tax to the payments that are subject to it, and accounting for VAT once the company registers. VAT registration follows the Revenue Code: it becomes mandatory once turnover from VAT-taxable supplies passes THB 1.8 million a year, and can be taken voluntarily earlier. Employing or sponsoring a foreign national does not itself create the VAT obligation, though some provincial offices, in our experience, expect to see a VAT registration in the work-permit file. Give your accountant standing access to statements, and file the capital-remittance evidence with them: the paid-up capital trail is among the first things the auditor confirms at year-end. Our accounting and tax packages are built to take exactly this handover.

Which mistakes cost founders the most time?

Five patterns account for most of the delays we see:

• Leaving the share-capital trail undocumented. Pre-registration payments are not the mistake — the initial 25% has to be paid before the company exists, and the DBD's source-of-funds order contemplates a director's account receiving it. The mistake is a payment nobody can tie to the shareholder register: the wrong payer, no statement, no explanation. Document each payment as it is made.
• Sending baht instead of foreign currency. Baht may be transferred into Thailand freely, so nothing here is prohibited. But if the sending bank converts first, there is no conversion in Thailand to evidence, and the record of a foreign-currency investment is weaker for it. Send in the original currency; let the Thai bank convert.
• A vague transfer purpose. A remittance referenced as, say, personal expenses cannot easily be re-characterised as share capital afterwards. Agree the wording with the receiving bank before sending.
• Losing the FET record or credit advice. Retrieval years later is slow at best. Store them with the statutory documents from day one.
• Walking in unprepared. A stale affidavit, an absent signatory, or improvised answers on source of funds each restart the process. One coordinated, well-briefed branch visit removes most of the avoidable delay; the bank's own risk assessment is not in your hands.

Get the sequence right — pay and document the initial share capital, register, open the account at the branch, remit further investment in foreign currency, keep every bank record — and the slowest step of Thai incorporation becomes a predictable one.

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This article is general guidance — not legal or tax advice. If you'd like a scoped opinion on how it applies to your specific situation, contact our team.