Transcript of the above video: 

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing transfer Wise in the context of Thai Immigration. For those who are unaware, there are many in Thailand who renew their visas based on inbound fund remittance be they folks who are on a Retirement Visa, be they folks who are on an O Marriage Visa, an O-A Visa might require this as well; that is another Retirement Visa. But long story short, there are many folks that use routine remittances, basically monthly remittances, to meet the financial threshold associated with those various visas. For example, you need to show 65,000 baht per month in inbound foreign remittance in order to be able to prove up one's ability to support oneself on for example on an O Retirement Visa. 

That said, I recently received an email from a viewer. Before I get into this, very quickly, also in sort of my spare time if you will - you'd say I'm a man with many hats or something - but my better half and I did set up a restaurant here in downtown Bangkok, Pancake Palace is the name. As the name implies, breakfast anytime, but it is American Diner style food, it's not just breakfast. We also have English style breakfast for the Brits out there who don't necessarily want to eat an American breakfast. We've also got American Diner style food, as I said: hamburgers, cheeseburgers, buffalo wings, chilli bowls, chilli dogs. We've also got grilled cheese sandwiches, glass bottled Coke. If you're interested, links are in the description below; we would love to see you at Pancake Palace. 

That said, getting into this email from a viewer, and tip of the hat to this person. Quoting directly: "Hi Ben, just a short follow-up to the changes to Wise I shared a few weeks ago." Yeah, so I did a video recently where I was talking about all this weird stuff that Wise was doing with respect to like inbound remittances and things. Apparently, they have since deleted the article I referenced before. That said, quoting further: "I regularly review the quote, "Wise guide to THB transfers", which can be found here. They still have not made any info. on the upcoming changes since deleting their article referenced in your first video. I found this interesting. Quoting: "Why can't Wise give me a confirmation letter of international fund transfer?" - and this seems to be from their website - quote:  "We are authorized by the Bank of Thailand to issue a confirmation letter of international fund transfer. This is due to how we operate. When you send money with us, we use our Thai banking partners to send your money locally. It doesn't cross any borders, so it doesn't register as a foreign transaction." And I will quote what this person said; actually I'll do the analysis here. 

So basically what happens is yeah, all of these different pools of money that Wise uses - it's like big bunch of honeycombs if you will - and they are sort of sequestered from each other and then they have their own internal sort of ledger if you will where they are constantly evening it out if you will, not to get into like, I'm not saying anything they are doing is nefarious, but it's sort of like bookies, where they have to keep the over round correct; they're always sort of laying off all the different action if you will - and again, not saying there is anything nefarious going on here. But for purposes of dealing with one's on going Visa renewals, especially where one is using inbound remittances, the way Wise does things can prove a problem and that is because many times, and I've done videos on this in the past, Immigration Officers want to see a specific citation in one's Bank book showing that it is a foreign fund transmission; it's a foreign fund transfer. I think it's FFT or FTT. I think in certain Banks they use that internal code. But one way or the other, it has to be a foreign Bank transaction, and when you're using Wise, the way that they work is it's not exactly foreign. This can cause problems for folks when renewing their visa because even though the remittances are coming in, it doesn't look like it's coming from overseas. And we have seen instances where Immigration Officers have made an issue of that. Recently I haven't heard about it a lot, but it could be happening. I mean our clients don't generally have to worry about that because oftentimes we work things out in such a way that they don't have to deal with a lot of these issues. But at the end of the day that's our job; that is what people pay us for. 

However, the point I am trying to make with this video is be careful when using Wise if you're looking to depend on it in the future, especially new folks coming in just now who aren't used to any of this stuff. Wise transfers into one's account may not be considered a foreign remittance, and that may therefore cause you some problems with regard to trying to extend your Visa here in the Kingdom of Thailand.