PromptPay raises fee-waiver ceiling

The ceiling for free money transfers via PromptPay will jump from 5,000 to 2 million baht in the future. (Photo by Chakkrapan Natanri)

The National e-Payment Committee will substantially raise Promptpay's fee-waiver ceiling for money transfers of up to 700,000 baht in the next two months, before raising the cap further to 2 million baht to encourage the use of the national e-Payment scheme.

According to Finance Minister Adisak Tantivorawong, the Thai Bankers' Association (TBA) have agreed to the new ceiling for transactions made through PromptPay's system.

Under the new ceiling, all transactions up to 5,000 baht are free, while transactions between 5,000-30,000 baht will charged a maximum fee of two baht. Transfers between 30,000-100,000 baht will incur a maximum fee of five baht and a fee of no more than 10 baht will be charged for transfers exceeding 100,000 baht.

The decision to raise the fee-waiver ceiling for transactions up to 2 million baht is aimed at supporting price settlement in the capital market, he said.

PromptPay was drawn up to transform Thailand into a cashless society in order to comply with the government's push towards the Thailand 4.0 model.

Currently, PromptPay has 44.3 million registrants, with cumulative transactions valued at 2.6 trillion baht.

At present, more than 90% of transactions made in Thailand remains cash-based.

Since its launch in January 2017, 525 million money transfers have been made to recipients who have registered their national ID or mobile phone numbers to a bank account, with an average transaction value of 4,000 baht.

Mr Adisak added that the Revenue Department is considering more financial incentives to attract taxpayers to use the e-Tax system by slashing withholding tax rate to either 1% or 2%, down from the current 3% for users of e-Withholding tax system.

To facilitate the collection of electronic data that is needed to enhance e-payments, he added, point-of-sale terminals will be upgraded in the near future, which would allow terminals to separate value-added tax (VAT) components from the amount tendered for goods and services. This is done to facilitate VAT refunds for welfare smart card holders.

The government is currently looking into the time needed to refund VAT to low-income earners, which could take longer than three months as initially planned.

Recipients of the government's welfare scheme who buy goods at Thong Fah Pracha Rat shops from Nov 1 to Dec 31 would get a VAT refund, in a move to boost domestic purchasing power.

The Revenue Department is also mulling to restrict personal income tax deduction claims only to those who had donated through the e-Donation system in order to prevent tax leakages, finished Mr Adisak.