No PromptPay at Checkout? How to Accept Online Payments in Thailand

Ask a Thai customer how they'd like to pay and the answer is rarely 'credit card'. Since PromptPay launched in 2017, scanning a QR code in a banking app has become the default way to pay for almost everything, from street food to hotel stays. If your website only accepts cards, or asks customers to transfer money and send a photo of the slip, you're losing sales at the exact moment someone has decided to buy.

What PromptPay is and why it dominates

PromptPay is Thailand's national instant payment service, created under the government's National e-Payment plan and supported by every major Thai bank. Money moves between accounts in seconds using a phone number, a national ID or a standard Thai QR code, and every major banking app can scan and pay. For customers it's faster than finding a card and feels safer than typing card details into an unfamiliar website.

The problem with 'transfer and send us the slip'

Many small businesses accept PromptPay manually: they show a QR code or an account number, and the customer sends a screenshot of the transfer slip on LINE. It works, but it has real costs:

• Someone has to check every slip against the bank account, often late at night.
• Fake and edited slips are a well-known scam in Thailand, and they're hard to spot by eye.
• Orders wait until a person confirms the payment, so customers wait too.
• Nothing links the payment to the order automatically, so mistakes and double bookings happen.

How automatic PromptPay checkout works

With a payment gateway, your website generates a unique QR code for each order with the exact amount. The customer scans it in their banking app and pays. The gateway confirms the payment to your website within seconds, the order is marked as paid, and both you and the customer get a confirmation, with no slip to check.

The same integration can accept cards, mobile banking and popular e-wallets such as TrueMoney, so tourists and international customers can still pay by card while Thai customers use QR.

Choosing a payment gateway in Thailand

Several payment gateways in Thailand support PromptPay QR, including Opn Payments (formerly Omise), 2C2P and GB Prime Pay, and many Thai banks offer their own merchant gateways. When you compare them, look at:

• Fees per transaction for QR, cards and wallets, which are often different.
• Settlement time: how quickly the money reaches your bank account.
• Supported methods: PromptPay, Thai and international cards, wallets and instalment plans.
• Documents required: registered companies and individuals are treated differently.
• Developer tools: a clear API and webhooks make automatic confirmation reliable.

What changes for your business

• Orders and bookings confirm instantly, 24 hours a day.
• No more slip checking and no fake-slip risk.
• Payments match orders automatically, which makes accounting simpler.
• Customers pay the way they already prefer, so fewer abandon checkout.

Connect payments to the rest of your business

A payment shouldn't end in your bank account. Connect it to a LINE or email confirmation for the customer, a notification for your team, your booking calendar or stock, and your accounting. That's where the real time savings are.

OutDept integrates PromptPay and card payments into websites, booking systems and LINE bots, so payments confirm themselves and land in the right place. If you're still checking slips by hand, let's talk about automating it.