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Thailand, Paypal and future of Commissions here
4 years ago
If you follow any Thai artists especially on Twitter, you probably hear this by now. To keep this short and avoid being too political, I will skip right into the meat of everything and the stuff that I need to bring up.
Because of the country policy and regulation, Thailand is pretty much borderline banned by Paypal starting February 2022.
Paypal will pretty much no longer allow any non-business account from Thailand to sign up and use it as a digital banking site. The only way to retain their access to paypal is to sign up with the government as an actual business group and start paying a crap ton of fees as part of the regulation.
This pretty much decimate the freelance market in Thailand especially artists that can barely break the minimum wage to even be qualified for it. For those that are qualified, all the payment will now be tracked and heavily taxed. Thai Paypal users will now have to pay (1) The paypal transaction fee, (2) the currency conversion fee when withdrawing the money, (3) The 7% VAT for receiving the money and now that the payment is being tracked, the artists will also have to include them into the tax form.
At the moment, only (1) is required and some artists already have the commissioners cover it, (2) can be ignored if the user just buy stuff online with currency like USD if they leave it on paypal and (3) doesn't exist. With (2) and (3) added on top, you will likely see Thai artists charging 25-30% more starting February 2022.
And I really don't want that so I'm trying to look for alternatives
I have been looking into alternatives so that I don't need to suddenly bump up all my prices like that in order to avoid taking a hit to my income and the amount of choice is rather limited. Etsy just kicked Thailand out of the accepted country list following this announcement so that's off the list and stuff like Stripe isn't available here. After looking around and reading the discussion happening here, I feel like the best options I can think of are the followings.
A) Follow the regulation to keep my Paypal alive
Paypal is still the most popular option. However, for payment done through Paypal, I will have to include all fees on top like everyone else and
B)Start accepting money through Wise direct transfer as well
Direct-to-bank wire transfer on Wise is an option that I use with some where Paypal isn't allowed. I hear it's not that popular as an option for some due to lack of consumer protection but with my record so far, I hope it will be enough to put me on your trusted list. If paid through Wise instead, I don't have to deal with the 7% VAT and the fee in general is lower than Paypal so the worst I have to cover for is the amount of tax on my income as they will now see how much I really earn from online commission as I can't just buy Steam game through Paypal money anymore.
I hear some bring up Payoneer as an option and I will make an account just in case but considering that it's an online banking like Paypal, I expect it to suffer the same fate.
If you know any other good alternatives, do bring it up and maybe share this to any other Thai artists you know so the art market here doesn't collapse just because it's February 18th.
Because of the country policy and regulation, Thailand is pretty much borderline banned by Paypal starting February 2022.
Paypal will pretty much no longer allow any non-business account from Thailand to sign up and use it as a digital banking site. The only way to retain their access to paypal is to sign up with the government as an actual business group and start paying a crap ton of fees as part of the regulation.
This pretty much decimate the freelance market in Thailand especially artists that can barely break the minimum wage to even be qualified for it. For those that are qualified, all the payment will now be tracked and heavily taxed. Thai Paypal users will now have to pay (1) The paypal transaction fee, (2) the currency conversion fee when withdrawing the money, (3) The 7% VAT for receiving the money and now that the payment is being tracked, the artists will also have to include them into the tax form.
At the moment, only (1) is required and some artists already have the commissioners cover it, (2) can be ignored if the user just buy stuff online with currency like USD if they leave it on paypal and (3) doesn't exist. With (2) and (3) added on top, you will likely see Thai artists charging 25-30% more starting February 2022.
And I really don't want that so I'm trying to look for alternatives
I have been looking into alternatives so that I don't need to suddenly bump up all my prices like that in order to avoid taking a hit to my income and the amount of choice is rather limited. Etsy just kicked Thailand out of the accepted country list following this announcement so that's off the list and stuff like Stripe isn't available here. After looking around and reading the discussion happening here, I feel like the best options I can think of are the followings.
A) Follow the regulation to keep my Paypal alive
Paypal is still the most popular option. However, for payment done through Paypal, I will have to include all fees on top like everyone else and
B)Start accepting money through Wise direct transfer as well
Direct-to-bank wire transfer on Wise is an option that I use with some where Paypal isn't allowed. I hear it's not that popular as an option for some due to lack of consumer protection but with my record so far, I hope it will be enough to put me on your trusted list. If paid through Wise instead, I don't have to deal with the 7% VAT and the fee in general is lower than Paypal so the worst I have to cover for is the amount of tax on my income as they will now see how much I really earn from online commission as I can't just buy Steam game through Paypal money anymore.
I hear some bring up Payoneer as an option and I will make an account just in case but considering that it's an online banking like Paypal, I expect it to suffer the same fate.
If you know any other good alternatives, do bring it up and maybe share this to any other Thai artists you know so the art market here doesn't collapse just because it's February 18th.
After briefly researching, I'm confused about the options in that region. The one that seemed to stick out besides transfer was Alipay "Express," but it seems to market itself toward online retailers rather than freelancers.
That would be great to see some resolve for fellow freelancers at some point. I'll make sure to bump Thai artists on socials when I can.
Best wishes in the meantime.
and yeah, I feel bad for the newer freelancers which are pretty much permanently shut from doing work online especially when considering how awful the rate of freelancing in Thailand. They're really desperate for options now that even considering signing up for e-residency for Estonia to make a paypal account there is a thing which is a big wtf.
3 months left to figure out a solution so hopefully people can come up with a good one.
The only time I tried to get into it was before Doge coin spiked during the gamestop thing but Thailand is one of those "We don't really allow you to buy anything until it's popular so it becomes too expensive for you to get into" so I never get the chance to invest.
I would advise against crypto, both because of the incoming regulation on that and secondly because of the pretty nasty enviromental impact it has. And I've never really fully understood how it works anyway, so I'm a little dumb on that front.