Thailand’s central bank has published how it would license issuers of a baht stablecoin and the companies that would hold one for customers. A consultation paper from the Bank of Thailand would require full backing in bank deposits at the start, redemption with the issuer at 1 baht per coin within one business day, no interest, and transfers only between identity-checked wallets. Comments run from 19 to 28 October 2026. The Ministry of Finance would have to designate both activities as licensed payment services, and the criteria would come after.

What a baht stablecoin would be

Thailand already runs PromptPay, a cheap retail network people trust. The Bank of Thailand would keep it. A baht coin would have to show a real, relevant, and measurable gain beside it: lower cost, less time, wider access, or a shared-ledger job such as a preset payment rule, service at any hour, or a swap that finishes only when both sides are done. Cross-border transfers are one place those frictions might ease. Where PromptPay already works, the ledger would still have to earn its place.

A tokenized deposit and tokenized e-money would stay a deposit and e-money in law. The ledger would only change the record, usually inside one company. The Bank of Thailand is testing tokenized-deposit transfers between institutions on BAHTNET, its wholesale rail. A 12 October PTYcoin article covers Singapore’s view that stablecoins may face limits in large wholesale settlement, and a plan to settle tokenised MAS bills with wholesale central-bank money.

The issuer would create the coins, redeem them, and run the reserve. A wallet provider would store them, send them, take payment, and buy or sell at 1 baht per coin, in a bank app, an e-money app, or its own app. The Bank of Thailand calls that split an open loop. The coin could pass from holder to holder, like cash, under conditions the bank sets.

Who could issue it, and who could hold it

The Bank of Thailand would ask the Ministry of Finance to make both businesses payment services under the Payment Systems Act B.E. 2560 (2017). The ministry would grant the license, a company would need it before opening, and the central bank would recommend the issuers.

Few issuers at the start. Too many would make people and shops hop between coins, confuse users and merchants, and weaken the coin as a unit of account. Each coin would trade thinly, so a rush to redeem might leave an issuer short of cash, and shops would pay repeatedly to connect to many issuers. A footnote says the Hong Kong Monetary Authority has favoured the same cap on issuer licenses.

Issuers would face a higher standard than e-money companies, which usually serve their own network. An open coin can reach further into payments and finance, and the bank might later allow reserve assets that are harder to manage, so it would recommend only a ready applicant.

Four tests sit in an annex. The applicant would need a real gain and wide use, funding for at least six months with no revenue, and at least one director and the technology chief with shared-ledger and payments experience, a Thai director working in Thailand with power to decide, and the technology chief full time in Thailand. The risk plan would forecast redemptions and say how customers are repaid if the business closes.

A later issuer round could open when the bank sees a need. Wallet licenses would come in rounds with no cap. The Bank of Thailand would encourage a first-round wallet applicant to file alongside an issuer, showing a joint plan, protection for customer coins, identity checks, and control of the keys.

Par redemption, no yield, verified wallets

The wallet would open in a bank app, an e-money app, or a dedicated app, and only after KYC on the customer and KYM on the merchant.

A holder could buy from the wallet provider or the issuer at 1 baht, or at the market price from a business supervised by Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission, in a category the commission has yet to allow. That price can differ from 1 baht. Coins could pay a merchant, go to another checked wallet, or settle a retail trade in a financial or digital asset. Baht would come back through a sale to the wallet provider at 1 baht, through redemption with the issuer within one business day, or through a market sale whose price may differ from 1 baht.

Coins could go only to a checked wallet. A self-run wallet off the list would stay closed. USDT can move between any two wallets on an open chain. The issuer could not pay interest or a perk based on holding time or size, outright or through another arrangement. The coin would be a means of payment. It would not be a tool for saving or investing.

Illegal use, or a bridge or a wrap onto a system outside supervision, would give the issuer power to freeze, seize or destroy the coins. The wallet provider could block a risky wallet, inside the law. Both would watch suspicious transfers. Customer coins would stay apart from company assets and could not be used for anything else. The provider would take complaints and errors, and could not link to an overseas exchange outside the commission’s supervision, a link the paper treats as a way around foreign-exchange controls.

The first reserve would be 100% bank deposits, spread across banks by size and risk capacity, so trouble at one bank, or a mass redemption, does less harm. Holders would have a right under the Payment Systems Act to full repayment if the issuer failed, which the paper calls bankruptcy remote. The issuer would separate that reserve from its other assets, publish the reserve and the coin count every day, and face an outside audit at least yearly. Short-dated government bonds could join the reserve only under a later law, and only if an issuer showed it could hold the value, manage the reserve, and handle liquidity. Bonds would stay out of stage one.

What happens after 28 October

Comments go to the Bank of Thailand’s hearing page or the government’s central portal for draft laws, or to FinTechDept@bot.or.th. The bank would revise the principles, ask the ministry to require the licenses under the 2017 act, and only then publish the criteria. A 13 October PTYcoin article says the Financial Stability Board still finds global stablecoins, and the national rules around them, untested in a severe stress or an insolvency.

This article is not investment advice.