Three state-owned banks in Thailand on June 1 will begin offering credit card customers additional funds to refinance their outstanding credit card debts, a Bank of Thailand spokesperson tells PaymentsSource.
Under the program, which Thailand’s Ministry of Finance initially proposed in mid-May, three banks including the Government Savings Bank Ltd., Krung Thai Bank Ltd. and Islamic Bank of Thailand Ltd will make the funds available to credit cardholders whose accounts are in good standing in order to refinance their debt.
Credit card customers of any bank in Thailand may receive up to 300,000 baht (US$9,900 or 6,880 euros) to refinance their debt at a 10% annual interest rate, half the prevailing rate of 20%, repayable over three to five years.
The plan originally involved only two participating state-owned banks and was limited to 200,000 baht per cardholder (
Altogether the ministry has earmarked approximately 10 billion baht for credit card refinancing under the program.
Cardholders may apply from June 1 to August 30 to receive refinancing funds; those who are approved must agree to incur no new card debts for at least one year, according to the Bank of Thailand spokesperson.
As of March, there were some 13.7 million credit card accounts in Thailand with total outstanding receivables of 241.9 billion baht, according to Bank of Thailand data.
Of these, there were 91,468 cardholders with 3.98 billion baht in debt overdue by up to three months while accounts overdue more than three months numbered 1.4 million with outstanding debts of 64.1 billion baht.
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