Exchange rates

John, just to add a bit to what "arjay" said:

According to XE.Com, they claim to use "mid-market" rates - details can be found here:

http://www.xe.com/faq.php#midmarket

In my own charts I use data which takes the average of the closing TT buy and sell rates in Thailand each trading day.

IMHO it is always better to check the Forex rates from the domestic Thai banks and, as has been often said on the forum, to exchange funds in Thailand (not only do you get the onshore rate, you get a much better deal as forex spreads are much tighter in Thailand - generally western banks use unethically large spreads on their forex deals to make colossal profits at the expense of their customers)

Pretty well all the Thai domestic banks quote their latest forex exchange rates on the internet.

wokkawombat wrote:............. I was quite happy using my Visa card for purchases in Thailand, (big C, airlines etc) untill I saw they were using the off shore rates for conversion from Baht to USD to AUD.

I read the English translations of the BoT rules months ago, from memory (which can be faulty) I was pretty sure that credit cards were exempt from the URR rules and should be translated at the onshore rate.

It seems to me that some financial institutions have seen the two tier rate as an easy way to profit at the expense of their customers (nothing new here).

If you feel sufficiently aggrieved, it may be worth a complaint to your home country central bank (as the regulator of banks and financial institutions), trying to lodge a complaint with the BoT may be a little harder.

When I use my Oz credit card here (Westpac Visa) it is always converted at my bank into A$ at the Thai onshore rate.

But you need to be careful, because at some terminals in Thailand they will do the conversion here, and present the slip for signature already in A$, having been converted at the less favourable offshore rate.