Thailand moves towards cashless society

BANGKOK, September 20 (TNA) - The Bank of Thailand (BOT) has reported on a progressive move of the country towards a world cashless society, observed by a jump of online financial transactions by the general public, especially those who earn monthly salaries. Aniya Chinmoy, a BOT analyst for payment systems policy, released a study report on the practicality of the government's PromptPay Program on Thursday, incidating that the number of users who have registered for the officially-online payment and other transaction services has reached 44.5 million since its introduction last year, a 6 per cent year-on-year increase as of August 2018. Aniya also stated that online financial payment and transactons through the official PromptPay system by the registered users have expanded by 35 per cent monthly on average so far. "Online financial payment and transactons through the official PromptPay Program particularly jumped up by six times, from its average quarterly rate, during the second quarter of this year, when compared with the first quarter, thanks to a waiver of a cross bank-transfer fee offered by all commercial banks in the country", said the BOT analyst. According to the BOT analyst, the accumulated financial transactions through the PromptPay Program had stood at 631 million items as of September 13, 2018, totally worth 3.1 trillion baht, with the average amount of each item dropping to 4,600 baht from 7,000 baht earlier, reflecting that the online banking system has been increasingly popular among general public, especially those who receive monthly salaries or wages, and that Thailand has been on a well progressive move towards a world cashless society. (TNA)