Payment Processing · Buyer guide
A Thai shop that takes a customer's PromptPay QR payment through its bank's merchant app can pay nothing for it. Krungsri and SCB say so on their own pages, and the exception at Krungsri is a registered company. On the bank apps and card readers that publish a price, a Thai Visa or Mastercard in person costs between 1.5% and 2.78% of the sale for a small seller in October 2026, and more for a business merchant. Online, the gateways we compared charge 2.95% to 3.65% on a domestic card and PayPal 3.90%. Stripe, Xendit and PayPal add a fixed fee of 10 to 17 baht a payment, and most providers then add 7% VAT on the fee.
This guide sets out what each provider publishes, read from its own pages on 17 and 18 October 2026, puts the rates side by side where they measure the same thing, and explains what Thai rules, Visa's rules and bank contracts say about passing the cost on.
PromptPay is Thailand's national instant-payment system, and the Thai QR code on a shop counter lets any customer pay from any Thai banking app. The big banks give small merchants an app that generates it. What they charge depends on who you are:
A gateway or terminal company does charge for PromptPay. Payso charges 1.00% for PromptPay on its card terminals, and the online gateways below charge 1.35% to 3.75%, plus a fixed fee at Xendit and Adyen.
Stripe Terminal is not available in Thailand: the country is not on Stripe's Terminal availability list, so in-person card acceptance means a Thai bank or a local provider. The ones that publish a rate are:
A countertop terminal from a bank is a different contract. KBank publishes its terminal charges but not its card rate on them. Set-up is free, against 3,000 baht normally, and the monthly fee is 400 baht for a plug-in model on the shop's own internet or SIM, 500 baht on the bank's SIM, or 1,000 baht for a portable one, plus 100 baht a month before VAT for a SIM. The fee is waived in any month the terminal takes 50,000 baht or more; since 1 September 2025 a company's Thai QR takings count towards that, an individual's only card sales. We found no published terminal card rates at Bangkok Bank or Krungthai.
Rates below are for a Thai online shop accepting a domestic card or PromptPay, as published on 17 and 18 October 2026. Unless stated, they exclude 7% VAT, which the provider adds to its fee.
2C2P (B-), the other large Thai gateway, publishes no card rate. Its merchant agreement leaves fees to a pricing proposal. The one price it does publish is for Qwik, its payment link for social-media sellers: 2.5% of the sale plus VAT on the fee, or 2.675% in total, according to its Thai help centre (updated November 2024). GB Prime Pay's website now redirects to Xendit's.
The fixed fees matter more than the percentages on small orders. At Xendit, a 300 baht card order costs 26.60 baht before VAT, nearly 8.9% of the sale, and a 100 baht PromptPay payment costs 17 baht, because the 10 baht minimum and the 7 baht processing fee both apply. Omise, Payso and ChillPay charge no fixed fee on cards, so their rates hold at any size.
Take a café run by a sole trader who is not registered for VAT. It takes 150,000 baht a month in person, from 1,000 sales of 150 baht each. Seven sales in ten, or 105,000 baht, are paid by Thai QR, and the remaining 45,000 baht on Thai Visa and Mastercard cards:
Krungsri comes out cheapest because it charges this café nothing for QR, and SCB's Mae Manee also advertises fee-free QR. Neither bank says whether its card rates include VAT, so ask before comparing them with Payso. A registered company would pay Krungsri for QR, at 0.35% (367.50 baht) or 5 baht on each of 700 QR sales (3,500 baht), and a Mung-Mee business merchant pays 1.8% to 3.5% on cards.
Now take a shop selling 200,000 baht a month online, 250 orders of 800 baht, all on Thai consumer cards. Before and after 7% VAT:
If the same 250 customers paid by PromptPay instead, the bill would be 2,700 baht at Payso, 3,300 baht at Omise or Stripe, 6,500 baht at ChillPay and 6,750 baht at Xendit, before VAT. Moving customers from card to QR cuts the bill by more than half at Omise, Payso and Stripe, by more than a third at Xendit, and not at all at ChillPay, which charges one rate for everything.
We found no Bank of Thailand rule that caps what a merchant pays to accept a card or a QR payment. The central bank's standard-fee notice of June 2026 covers 19 bank charges in four groups, deposit accounts, ATM and debit cards and credit-card cash withdrawals, payment transactions and SME loans, and cuts several of them. Merchant acceptance fees are not among them.
Nor did we find a Thai statute that bans a card surcharge. What binds shops is the card networks' rules and the bank contract. Visa's Core Rules (April 2026 edition) bar a merchant from adding any amount over the normal price unless local law expressly requires that surcharging be allowed; in Thailand Visa permits a separate service fee only on tax, government-service and fine payments. SCB's card-acceptance terms put it in contract form: no fee for paying by card, no price above the cash price, no minimum for card payment, and any discount offered to other customers must go to cardholders too. Ask your own acquirer for its clause before adding a fee. For other countries, see our guide to card surcharge rules.
VAT is the other cost to plan for. Omise, Payso and Stripe add 7% VAT to their fees, and Xendit says its fees exclude local taxes such as VAT. A VAT-registered business can generally reclaim it as input tax; a sole trader who is not registered cannot. Stripe's help centre says its fees may attract 3% withholding tax, which Stripe pays back as an extra 3% of the monthly invoice. ChillPay and 2C2P's Qwik also mention 3% withholding.
Foreign cards cost more online: 4.75% + 10 baht at Stripe, 4.50% + 17 baht at Xendit and 4.40% + 11 baht at PayPal, against one rate for every card at Omise and ChillPay. In store, KBank's 1.5% offer excludes foreign cards, which its FAQ prices at 2.25% to 3.10% on QR credit card. For Chinese visitors' wallets, Krungsri charges 1.6% to 1.8% for Alipay and WeChat Pay in store; online, Omise charges 1.65% for WeChat Pay and 3.65% for Alipay+. If a terminal offers tourists the choice to pay in their home currency, read our guide to dynamic currency conversion before you switch it on.
For neighbouring markets on the same basis, see our guides to card and DuitNow fees in Malaysia and card and PayNow fees in Singapore.
