ATM fees in Thailand: ฿250 with Visa, ฿350 with Mastercard

Last updated on 12 September 2026

Every ATM withdrawal in Thailand costs 250 baht with a Visa card and 350 baht with a Mastercard. That 100-baht gap has nothing to do with your bank at home — it depends entirely on which card you insert. And there is no way around the fee itself: every major Thai bank charges foreign cards the same amount. No fee-free ATM exists in Thailand.

What Thai ATMs actually charge

Figures as of 1 September 2026, from the POVNOMAD fee dataset. For Thailand the underlying source is ATM Fee Saver, single-sourced and not cross-checked against a second reference. American Express is usually only ฿50. Krungthai charges no network fee for JCB cards. TTB also applies a ฿200,000 daily cap. Fees and limits change — the figure shown on the ATM screen is what applies.

This is the fee charged by the Thai operator. Whatever your own bank adds for foreign withdrawals comes on top.

The 100-baht question: Visa or Mastercard

If you are carrying both, use the Visa card. A hundred baht per withdrawal sounds trivial, but it compounds: six withdrawals over three weeks means 600 baht extra for exactly the same cash.

American Express is the outlier in the other direction — most Thai banks charge only 50 baht. Acceptance is far patchier, though, and many Amex cards carry their own foreign transaction fees.

The withdrawal limit matters more than the fee

Because Thai ATMs charge a flat amount per transaction rather than a percentage, your real cost is decided by how many times you have to withdraw.

Say you need ฿60,000 over two weeks. At Krungthai or Standard Chartered, capped at ฿20,000, that is three withdrawals — ฿750 in fees with a Visa card. At Kasikorn, Krungsri, SCB, TTB or UOB, capped at ฿30,000, two withdrawals do it — ฿500. A ฿250 difference decided by nothing but which ATM you walked up to.

So the rule is simple: withdraw the largest amount you can safely carry, and look for a machine with a ฿30,000 limit.

Colour codes: which ATM belongs to which bank

Thai ATMs are colour-coded, which makes them easy to spot from across a street. Yellow machines are Krungsri, green are Kasikorn, purple are Siam Commercial and blue are Bangkok Bank. All four charge the same fee; three of them (Krungsri, Kasikorn, SCB) allow the higher ฿30,000 limit.

Withdrawing at the airport

ATMs in the arrival halls at Suvarnabhumi, Don Mueang, Phuket and Chiang Mai belong to the same banks and charge the same fees. There is no airport surcharge on bank ATMs.

Currency exchange counters in the terminal are a different matter — their rates are routinely worse than in town. Be wary, too, of standalone machines near the baggage belts that do not clearly belong to a bank; those can carry different terms.

A practical routine on arrival: take one maximum withdrawal from a bank ATM, then top up in town as needed. You will want a data connection anyway — Grab and Bolt only work online.

Decline the conversion

After you enter an amount, the machine may offer to bill you in your home currency and show what looks like a helpful exchange rate. This is dynamic currency conversion, and the rate is worse than your bank’s — often by several percent.

The correct answer is always Continue in THB, Without conversion or Decline conversion. The amount is then charged in baht and your own bank converts at the Visa or Mastercard rate.

The screen is designed to make the home-currency option look like the safe one. It is not.

What your own bank adds

The 250 or 350 baht applies regardless of who issued your card. On top of it, most banks charge a foreign transaction fee — commonly in the region of 1.5 to 3 percent — and some add a flat charge per withdrawal.

Check two figures in your card’s terms before you travel: the foreign transaction percentage, and whether there is a fixed per-withdrawal fee. Cards marketed as travel or multi-currency products often waive one or both, but the Thai operator fee is charged either way — no card avoids it.

How much cash you actually need in Thailand

Cards work reliably in hotels, malls, chain restaurants and larger shops. You need cash for street food, markets, songthaews, tuk-tuks, small temple entrance fees, massages and tips.

For two weeks staying in mid-range hotels, a typical cash requirement is ฿10,000 to ฿20,000 — a single withdrawal at a ฿30,000 machine. Island-hopping changes the maths: on Koh Rong, Koh Kood and smaller islands, ATMs are scarce and card acceptance is the exception rather than the rule.

Why you want to be online at the ATM

Three things need a connection at the machine: your bank’s push approval, the live rate to check what you are being offered, and your balance if something looks wrong. If the machine debits your account without dispensing cash — which does happen in Thailand — you need your banking app immediately, not back at the hotel Wi-Fi.

A POVNOMAD Thailand eSIM starts at €2.90. You install it at home by QR code and the validity period only starts when your phone first connects to a network in Thailand. Unlimited plans include hotspot at no extra cost up to the daily allowance; after that the connection continues at 1 Mbps rather than being switched off.

Why that one button is so expensive and what it is called on different screens is covered in With or without conversion? — the ATM screens are reproduced there.

Frequently asked questions