PromptPay is the first stage of the national e-payment scheme. Official registration for PromptPay took effect on Friday. The transferors will be charged Bt2 for transactions valued between Bt5,001 to Bt30,000, Bt5 for those between Bt30,001 and Bt100,000, and Bt10 for anything above Bt100,000.The banks will maintain their current fees for all cash transactions until the end of 2019.After that their fees for cash transactions via bank counters and ATMs will match the actual cost, and this will encourage consumers to migrate from cash to cashless transactions, Anuchit has said.PromptPay fees will apply also for bill-payments and request-to-pay services in the second phase of the project, which will be implemented in December. It will enable people to make electronic transactions easily, by using their national identity or mobile-phone numbers.Banks accepted pre-registration for the scheme from July 1-14, and according to the Bank of Thailand, 9.7 million signed up.Of that total, 8.1 million chose to access the service by linking their ID numbers with their savings accounts and 1.6 million opted to use their mobile-phone numbers.Anuchit told The Nation that if 20-30 per cent of individual savings accounts are linked to PromptPay, e-payments would significantly increase, moving Thailand towards becoming a cashless country.Yos Kimsawatde, head of Thai Bankers' Association's Payment System Office, said the proportion of cashless payments in Thailand was expected to rise to 50-60 per cent of the total within five years from the current 30 per cent if there are enough electronic data capture (EDC) devices nationwide.Earlier, the TBA aimed for 50-60 per cent of transactions to be cashless by 2020, up from 25 per cent at that time, and e-payments to account for 60-70 per cent of total value, up from 30 per cent.At present, there are about 300,000 EDC units in Thailand.If the targets are reached, the overall cost of cash management will be reduced by 50 per cent from the current level of more than Bt900 billion, or 0.8 per cent of gross domestic product.According to the BOT, the value of e-payments last year was Bt282.92 billion, up from Bt266.31 billion in 2014.Interbank fund transfers are smaller than in-house transfers because of the fees charged to senders.Last year, interbank fund transfers totalled Bt18.17 billion against Bt15.9 billion in 2014.Automated teller machines are the No 1 channel for interbank transfers, followed by Internet/mobile banking and bank counters.Under the first phase of PromptPay, transferors will not need transferees' bank details to send money from October 31 onwards and the fee for payments will be exempted for transactions of up to Bt5,000.

Source: The Nation Bangkok July 17, 2016 18:00 UTC