Most financial services in Thailand are not easily available for tourists. The only exception is Rabbit LINE Pay which allows easily to register for all foreigners. The service is quite convenient because it allows you to link a foreign credit card and pay in some places with line QR codes. Below I will show you how I opened an account and what I can do with it.
Attention! In 2023, the article has become slightly outdated. Currently, foreign cards can only be used for BTS payments. In all other places, the application will display an error if a foreign card is selected as the payment method. The application can still be used, but now it must be topped up (like a wallet), so it is no longer as convenient an option as it was before.
What is Line?
Line is the most popular mobile app communicator in SE Asia and some other countries. I would say that this is an Asian alternative to WhatsApp. The only difference is that in Thailand it is not only a communicator app, but it is also a real super app, you can buy stuff online, order food, taxi and a lot more.
What is Rabbit?
Actually, the Rabbit card was originally a card for collecting fares for the BTS sky train, but after some time it changed to another electronic wallet with which you can pay in some places.
So what is Rabbit LINE Pay?
Rabbit LINE Pay as the name says is a cooperation between those 2 services. It allows paying with a QR code system in all places that accept Line payments and also allows linking credit cards for payments and BTS rides. That means account top-up is no longer needed. Because the service is pretty popular it is possible to pay by this method in many places. What is even cooler, it is possible to pay like that with a credit card in places where normally it is not possible or to have a high minimum for card payments.
How to register?
And this is the most complicated part. The whole registration etc took me around 2 weeks. First, to register in Rabbit LINE Pay I needed to use the Thai phone number. After that, I registered with a form for foreigners. For one week I wasn’t accepted or rejected so I contacted with customer service, it looks like they weren’t sure how to act with foreigners, finally, they just asked for pictures of the second document – my id or driving licence. It took some time and my account was activated. But I still wasn’t able to pay with my foreign credit card linked, I needed to contact customer service again, and send pictures of the card and passport and id again. And after that everything started working correctly. Finally, I added my rabbit BTS card, and I needed to walk to the BTS station with my passport to turn it on. And now I can enjoy the full functionality of Rabbit Line pay. You can see that it took me a lot of time to organise everything and many messages with customer service, if it is normal, make sure that you are going to spend at least 1 month in Thailand, if not maybe it is not worth playing with the whole procedure.
Links to Line app: https://line.me/en/
