PromptPay – Thailand's National Payment System

PromptPay (พร้อมเพย์) is Thailand's national instant payment infrastructure, jointly developed by the Bank of Thailand (BOT) and the Thai Bankers' Association (TBA). Launched in January 2017 as part of the government's National e-Payment Master Plan, PromptPay fundamentally changed how Thais send and receive money — replacing slow inter-bank transfers with a system that settles in under five seconds, around the clock, every day of the year.

The core idea is deceptively simple: instead of sharing a bank account number and branch code, a recipient registers a PromptPay ID — either a Thai mobile phone number or a 13-digit National ID (บัตรประชาชน) — and links it to their bank account. Businesses can register a tax ID (เลขนิติบุคคล) instead. The sender only needs to know the PromptPay ID to push money directly to any linked account, regardless of which of the 30+ participating banks holds the account.

A PromptPay QR Code encodes the payment information using the same EMV Merchant Presented Mode (MPM) standard used by systems like PIX (Brazil) and QRIS (Indonesia). The payload is a TLV (Tag-Length-Value) encoded string anchored to the PromptPay AID (A000000677010111) and protected by a CRC16-CCITT checksum. Thai banking apps parse and verify this checksum before processing a payment.

Who uses PromptPay? Virtually every person and business in Thailand:

• Street vendors and market traders display a printed PromptPay QR code — customers scan and pay instantly without cash or card terminals.
• Hotels and tour operators accept PromptPay for deposits and full payments from both Thai and international visitors whose banks participate in SWIFT PromptPay linkages.
• Freelancers and sole traders share their PromptPay QR on invoices, Line messages and social media to collect payments in seconds.
• E-commerce platforms (Lazada, Shopee TH, LINE Shopping) offer PromptPay at checkout for frictionless one-scan payment.
• Government disbursements — welfare transfers, tax refunds, COVID-19 relief payments — were distributed via PromptPay to millions of recipients registered with their National ID.

PromptPay is free for consumers. Businesses pay a very small per-transaction fee (typically ฿1–2 per transaction regardless of amount), making it far cheaper than card acceptance. There are no monthly fees, no hardware requirements and no merchant account needed — just a bank account linked to a PromptPay ID.

QRPayHub's PromptPay generator produces fully spec-compliant EMV payloads with the CRC16 checksum computed client-side in your browser — free, instant and without any server-side processing or data collection.