As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing virtual banking in Thailand. What is this you might ask? Well I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Determining the future of virtual banking. Quoting directly: "The Bank of Thailand has issued a consultation paper for the virtual bank licensing framework as part of its hearings into the creation of virtual banks as new financial service providers. Below are details about virtual banks listed in the paper and frequently asked questions.

BASIC INFO:

What is a virtual bank and how is it different from traditional commercial banks that have mobile / internet banking services?

A virtual bank is a commercial bank without a physical branch, and mainly provides a full range of services via digital channels.

So yeah folks in the west are probably well aware of this. There are a number of different banks in the United States and the UK that are banks that are basically just an online bank, there is no physical terminal if you will. So the questions I have on this are: a) I think it is making a pretty heavy presumption that a significant part of Thailand's Economy is going to move into the digital sphere. I do think there will be parts of the overall economy that yeah, will start utilizing things like virtual banking or digitization when it comes to transactions but I don't think that this is some kind of major sea change insofar as, and I could be wrong on this, I really could be wrong on this, but I don't think it is a major sea change insofar as we are something where all banking is going to go digital, I just don't think it's possible. People tend to forget, we have done some videos here recently, I think I did one, put one up in the last couple of days about is Thailand going to collapse from debt? Is the economy going to collapse from debt? My position on that is no I think it is highly unlikely because Thailand has a substantial cash economy fundamentally. I think the same could be said here. Yes I think there are going to be some folks that are going to quickly adopt so-called virtual banking insofar as banking that doesn't have an office, a bank that doesn't have a branch, but I think it is going to be a pretty low percentage of folks in the overall economy when you compare it against everybody else. I just don't think it is going to be a huge number of folks that are going to come rushing through for this again because Thailand is such a cash heavy economy.