Thailand’s Central Bank Green Lights e-KYC for Early 2019

Thai Banks celebrate as the Bank of Thailand (BoT) green lights the testing of e-KYC without the need of a national digital ID bill for early 2019.

News of the future direction of e-KYC in Thailand has long been awaited for by the financial sector and various companies.  Finally there has been some clarity as the BoT prepares to approve the testing of e-KYC or Electronic-Know-Your-Customer in the financial sector.  It is a step closer to having banks electronically verify the identities of customers.  e-KYC can now exit the Regulatory Sandbox in the first quarter of 2019. 

What is so interesting about this latest news is banks can now offer these tech services to customers without having to wait for the national digital identification bill to be approved.  The initial use of the e-KYC will mostly be used to open new bank accounts.  However the use of this new tech to connect various services such as investment and insurance products will have to wait for the approval of the national digital identification bill.  So that means we will get the opportunity to see the use of e-KYC for basic bank transactions soon. 

This news came from an interview given to Prachachat media from Siritida Panomwon Na Ayudhya, the assistant governor for Payment Systems Policy and Financial Technology Group for BoT.  Meanwhile Mr. Ronadol Numnonda, Deputy Governor of Financial Institutions Stability of the BoT says in 2019, in exception for banking services that must follow central standard regulations, banks are able to run tests on other services in their own various sandboxes.  They would not be required to conduct testing within the BoT sandbox.