Thailand does not trust debit cards

Recently Thailand banking industry has started popularizing the use of plastic cards as payment methods trying to reduce the prevalent use of cash.  In spite of that, a new survey released by Kasikorn Research Center showed that generally Thai plastic card holders prefer not to use their debit cards when making payments.

The survey found that 18% of the respondents can not distinguish between ATM cards and debit cards with 61.7% of the total polled never used their debit cards for purchases at a store. Several reasons for a very low popularity of debit card payment option were discovered. Among those is the fact that many Thai stores prefer and encourage the use of cash to avoid frequent technical problems with the card readers. Almost 33% experienced that personally and outlined that most of the stores fix a minimum spending level for debit card usage.   

Most of the surveyed chose credit over debit cards as they pose fewer problems when conducting transactions. Over 70% of the respondents prefer to use their credit cards when making purchases.