Transcript of the above video:

It took me a little while to cotton on to this topic to make this video. I kind of knew this was coming or frankly we saw it mostly through the prism of corporate matters because PayPal deals with corporations here in Thailand a little differently than individuals.

PayPal has been a very useful tool, probably I would say for about the last 20 years here in Thailand, give or take. I know I myself we here at the firm, we have found PayPal very convenient especially when we have had to deal with things where there was a real timing issue and time was dealing with a bank wire, if you had something that needed to be done urgently it is nice having PayPal to know "okay funds have been remitted and we can move along". But apparently we are going to see an end of the use of PayPal here in Thailand. Quoting directly from Coconuts, that is coconuts.co, the title is: Here is why PayPal will be cut off in Thailand. Quoting directly: "In 4 months, PayPal will effectively be dead in Thailand for most users." Quoting further: "Under the new terms announced last week, (and this was published a little while ago, as I said it took me a little while to cotton onto this, at least for individuals here in Thailand, it just didn't really didn't really register for me) quoting again: "under the new terms announced last week, the Company said any personal account created before March 2021 will be unable to receive payments or hold a balance after February. The same rules apply for all business accounts not registered via the Government's new Know Your Business or KYB program, a scheme intended to increase transparency in finance and combat money laundering." It seems taxation is another major issue here as they get to later in this article. I urge folks who are watching this video, go check out this article if this is of interest to you because there is a lot going on in here and this article is very good at sort of elucidating what is going down. Quoting further: “In essence that means that one must have a KYB registered business account in order to have a PayPal account at all. Personal PayPal accounts in Thailand will be dead as of March.” and that does appear to be the case. We are looking going here through mid-February we are looking at the end of PayPal on a personal level for folks here in Thailand. 

So what exactly that means, for those of you, not a lot of foreign nationals or I would say a fair number foreign nationals have found it rather difficult to get like a personal PayPal account here in Thailand. There is a lot going on. I think this will have a lot of tremendous, obviously negative ramifications on the so-called freelance sector. As noted in the article, Thailand is like the only jurisdiction I think maybe around the world, that is imposing this level of sort of scrutiny or imposing these kind of rules on PayPal. I actually think candidly policy makers should probably rethink this because I don't think that they are fully grasping the ramifications of shutting off a spigot of foreign capital pouring into the country. I can understand things like anti-money laundering concerns and taxation. Taxes are always the priority of a Government. Revenue generation, it just is what it is. I mean when I say this I have had people comment to me mostly friends, they will say "wow, it is amazing you are saying that out loud!" It is like what is there to whisper about? Governments need taxes. Governments gobble up taxes like Pac-Man gobbles up pack pellets. They need them to survive; that is just what they do. So yeah, I understand Revenue generation but I think this is one of those situations where "the cure may be worse than the disease". I just can't imagine and I don't know, I could be massively under informed here but I just can't imagine that money laundering is that pervasive a problem and I don't think people are understanding or I should say policy makers are understanding how much foreign capital is probably coming in to Thailand on a regular basis as a result of PayPal. To sort of really tighten up the vice grip on that in order to gain what will probably amount to relatively little in terms of tax revenue compared to the substantial benefits that likely existed prior to this coming into effect in terms of the capital inflow, I don't think policy makers are really taking that into account. Now that is my opinion. So setting that aside, what does this mean? On a practical level, yeah freelancers, foreign or otherwise, you are not going to be able to keep using your PayPal account come March unless something substantively changes. 

That stated, those who are foreign nationals here in Thailand and are working and things and receiving remuneration, you really need to have a Work Permit in order to be doing that so a Company isn't that big of an issue anyway. Go ahead and get a Company, set up your PayPal through that company and deal with all the compliance issues associated with that and move on down the road.