Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing bank accounts and foreigners here in Thailand, and bank accounts being closed due to lack of proper visas. So what are we talking about here? Well first of all, let me be clear. I'm hearing about this anecdotally; I'm hearing about this from folks in the firm who are dealing with this on a day-to-day basis. They are hearing about it so this isn't something we have dealt with directly, but let me stress, perhaps "yet" might need to be added to that, I don't know. 

It looks like there seems to be a trend through anecdotal evidence where we are ascertaining that there is a trend apparently of Bank Accounts being closed when the Bank Accounts are held by foreigners who do not have proper visas. Now what are we talking about? As most folks know - especially in the expat community - getting a bank account opened up in Thailand can be something of a difficult endeavour at the best of times. Even if you have long-term Visa status, again Banking in Thailand can be a bit complicated for foreigners especially now. Couple that with recent policy changes and some legal changes recently and you have got a situation where it has become even harder - if not nearly impossible - to get a new bank account of people without long-term visa status already set up. So again, we discussed this in prior videos; we are seeing bank accounts not being as easy open; we're also hearing that they are not opening any new ones in terms of dealing with banking for Retirement Visa conversion but now something we are hearing about is folks who do manage, and there are some instances where folks may get a Bank Account on a Tourist Visa that if the bank later sees that that visa never became a long-term visa here in Thailand, i.e. a non-immigrant visa, something that is not tourism related something that is temporary visa, banks will close the account and apparently again, this is all anecdotal right now, and I will make further videos updating on this. I probably may need to do a long form video on our paid news service but that's a little further down the road; it's a little too soon for me to get into detail nuance yet. 

But long story short, it looks like banking is something of an issue to begin with for folks here in Thailand already. Banking rules have tightened up. On top of that, it looks like there could be problems for folks who do not have a long-term Visa as their Bank Account may be closed "retroactively" if you will if they don't have a Long-Term visa and the bank sees that they don't have a long-term visa. So again, we are going to keep people updated on this channel regarding this issue. 

That said, for now understand this is anecdotal, some degree of speculations about the fact that yeah it looks like banking is not going to be easiest thing to deal with and bank accounts may be closed if folks don't get their visa status in good order.