Without a Thai bank account, you can pay by card in Thailand through the DeepPocket and TrueMoney wallets: both issue a virtual card and register foreigners with a passport. In DeepPocket, QR payments are free and topping up is what you pay for: 4.5% from a foreign card, 2% by other methods. A TrueMoney wallet holds 30,000 baht, or 50,000 after enhanced verification.
Every year Thailand tightens the rules, and banks are less and less willing to issue debit cards to foreigners. Middlemen who help you open an account at Bangkok Bank charge a fair bit for it. But you don’t need a bank to shop in stores and online.
1. DeepPocket
DeepPocket is a payment wallet from the company T2P that lets you get by without a traditional bank. It issues virtual and physical Visa cards for shopping in stores and online. You can top up your balance from a Thai bank account, via QR, at Counter Service in Lotus’s and from an international credit card. Through Wise, DeepPocket sends money abroad in 16 currencies.
QR payments (PromptPay): up to 500,000 baht a month in shops, up to 50,000 for transfers to people
There’s no subscription fee: the 399-baht package for 30 days, which still turns up in reviews, was dropped by T2P in summer 2025. For verification you need a passport with an NFC chip, or, if yours has no chip, your passport plus one more document. Limits and fees for transfers and withdrawals are in our separate breakdown of DeepPocket.
2. TrueMoney
TrueMoney is one of the most popular payment services in Thailand, available to customers of every mobile network. In the TrueMoney Wallet app you can pay at 7-Eleven and other shops, pay utility and phone bills, and transfer money between wallets. For online shopping there’s the TrueMoney Mastercard, a virtual prepaid card: it takes money straight from your wallet balance, and there’s no annual fee. You can also top up the wallet with cash at 7-Eleven. Payments to merchants registered outside Thailand carry a 3.5% fee.
Wallet balance: up to 30,000 baht with a passport alone, up to 50,000 baht after enhanced verification
Basic verification only needs your passport. For enhanced verification you need one more document on top: a work permit, a non-immigrant visa, a Thai driving licence, an alien ID or a student visa. The difference matters for more than the balance. With basic verification, payments to foreign merchants are capped at 1,000 baht a month, and transfers to a bank account aren’t available. After enhanced verification, the limit is up to 50,000 baht a month. You can add the virtual card to Google Pay.
Why Bybit Card is no longer on the list
The third option here used to be the card from the Bybit crypto exchange. It’s no longer a workable route. Since 28 June 2025 Bybit’s website has been blocked in Thailand by order of the SEC: the regulator cut off several exchanges operating without a Thai licence. According to the exchange’s own help materials, Thailand isn’t on the list of countries where the card is issued. Using it through a VPN means keeping money on a platform the local regulator has explicitly called illegal, and we don’t recommend it.
These two wallets are enough for shopping and online payments in Thailand. And if you need to change roubles into baht and top up your card, use our service: roubles to baht exchange in Pattaya (in Russian).
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