Most PayPal users in Thailand will be locked out of the service next month unless they jump through a series of complex and quite silly hoops that are intelligible only to Thai citizens.
PayPal told customers this morning that they cannot use the service after December 15 unless they take “certain actions” that, while puzzling and poorly described, will be next-to-impossible to execute.
Step 1. Enter your Thai national ID number.
Step 2. There is no step 2. You don’t have an ID number, can’t get one, and nothing else will do.
Combatting money laundering is the standard, transparent excuse these days for making the lives of ordinary people unnecessarily complicated. Paypal plans to shut down all private accounts that are not registered under the government digital identity program.
“For the time being, a Thai national ID is required to enrol… other forms of identification which do not have a 13-digit Thai national ID number, such as a non-Thai passport, work permit, non-Thai Identification card (pink ID), or Thai Permanent Resident Permit cannot be accepted.”
The good news is that you have until the end of November to register in the government’s secretive digital identification program, known as the National Digital ID, or NDID. Please be generous in sharing the tales of your success in the comments section! We’d love to know how it went, though suspect we already know.
Once the changeover is complete, domestic payments can only be made in Thai baht. Only credit cards and not debit cards can be used. Payments involving other currencies will be capped at THB800,000 (US$21,400). VAT of 7% will be collected on PayPal fees.
Enrolling in the NDID program, PayPal fantasises, can be done via a mobile app or in person at any bank. To enrol, simply “check with your bank”. Good luck with that.