The Bank of Thailand (BOT) is accepting public comments until May 2, 2025, on three draft notifications that will institute an enhanced supervision scheme and impose additional requirements for systemically important retail payment system (SIRPS) operators to align with international standards and encourage open infrastructure and competition. The SIRPS operators will be determined by the BOT from the “designated payment system operators” under the Payment Systems Act B.E. 2560 (2017). SIRPS Designation The BOT will announce a list of payment system operators designated as SIRPS operators and thus subject to enhanced supervision. The BOT will evaluate whether the payment system operator should be deemed a SIRPS operator when it meets the criteria in either the BOT’s quantitative or qualitative assessments, which cover the following: Quantitative assessment: The payment system’s transaction values, market share, cross-border payment network scale and value, and settlement with other financial market infrastructure. Qualitative assessment: The payment system’s function as a part of the country’s payment system infrastructure, the significance of the system users’ roles in the payment services, the substitutability of the payment system, and the impact level on the public and users in the event of an emergency or system suspension. Supervision of SIRPS Business Operations SIRPS operators will be subject to heightened supervision in three areas, in addition to various BOT regulations on designated payment system supervision, as follows: Governance: SIRPS operators will be required to have a balanced board composition with an independent director and directors with varied expertise, establish subcommittees to assist the board in supervising the operator’s compliance with its policy and strategy, and have senior executives overseeing risk and technology security separately from the executives overseeing business operations. Risk management and security: SIRPS operators will be required to have comprehensive risk management to ensure system stability and security. This

On April 11, 2025, Thailand’s Office of Insurance Commission (OIC) released draft principles for two notifications for public comment, open until the end of April. These aim to amend the OIC Notifications on Guidelines for Customer Personal Data Protection for life and non-life insurance businesses, which were issued in 2021. Key Principles Both life and non-life insurance companies will be required to obtain consent for the following processing activities: Processing of general personal data: When requesting the OIC to disclose information related to a customer’s insurance policy for the purpose of underwriting or claims consideration. Processing of sensitive personal data: When requesting the OIC to disclose information related to a customer’s insurance policy for the purpose of underwriting or claims consideration; and When requesting the OIC to disclose information about a customer’s insurance fraud behavior for fraud monitoring, fraud risk management, and assessing and preventing insurance fraud risk for underwriting or claims payment. The consent for the above processing activities must be in accordance with the consent requirements prescribed by the OIC, and the disclosure of personal data must also comply strictly with the conditions set by the OIC. Life insurance companies may obtain consent for other purposes as long as they comply with Thailand’s Personal Data Protection Act B.E. 2562 (2019), and companies will be liable in the event of a personal data breach. Additional Principles for Non-Life Insurance Businesses Non-life insurance companies will be required to provide a privacy notice and a summary of the privacy notice for each type of insurance policy in accordance with the form prescribed by the OIC. The privacy notice and its summary must be provided prior to or at the time of offering insurance policies, or together with the consent form for data processing through any channels used for offering insurance.

On April 12, 2025, Thailand published an amendment to the Emergency Decree on Measures for the Prevention and Suppression of Technological Crimes in the Government Gazette, with the regulation taking effect the following day. Drafts of the amendment had been shared in recent months, and the final amendment of the decree contains some additional key revisions, such as narrowing the business operators subject to the decree’s requirements, reducing operators’ obligations, and establishing collaboration between relevant stakeholders to tackle technology crime. These key revisions to the amendment are detailed below. Business operators subject to the decree: The business operators covered under the decree now include only payment service providers under the Payment System Act and digital asset operators under the Royal Decree on Digital Asset Businesses. Digital platform services under the Royal Decree on Digital Platform Service Businesses That Are Subject to Prior Notification are no longer within the scope of the decree. Definition of technology crime: The final version of the amendment removed the expanded definition of technology crime that had been included in a previous draft, leaving the decree’s existing definition unchanged. Telecommunications provider obligations: Mobile and telecommunications service providers now have an obligation to monitor and screen for content that may be related to technology crime and suspend SIM cards when instructed to do so by the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC). Transaction and account suspension: The amendment removes the decree’s complex transaction suspension procedures and leaves room for business-specific regulators (e.g., Bank of Thailand, Securities and Exchange Commission, NBTC) to impose various technology crime suspension requirements on business operators under their supervision. The newly established Center for Prevention and Suppression of Technology Crimes can also notify financial institutions and business operators of names or digital asset wallet addresses that may be related to technology crime,

After making revisions to the initial draft notification released in November 2024, Thailand’s Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA) has released an updated draft Notification on Additional Obligations for Digital Platform Service Operators of Online Marketplaces for Goods with Specific Characteristics under Section 18(2) of the Royal Decree on the Operation of Digital Platform Service Businesses Subject to Prior Notification B.E. 2565 (2022) B.E. … . A focus group session was also held to gather feedback from business operators. Below is a summary of key provisions in the new draft. Unchanged Items Some key concerns that remain unchanged from the previous version of the draft notification include the following: Offshore business operators running online marketplaces that act as intermediaries for the sale or exchange of goods and provide facility services for the sale of goods (referred to as “specific marketplace operators” in the draft) are required to establish a local entity in Thailand. However, the criteria for determining which operators are specific marketplace operators are still under discussion due to feedback from business operators. Specific marketplace operators must submit a compliance report to the ETDA along with their annual report each year. Specific marketplace operators must verify that “business users” (e.g., merchants) provide complete details about goods in accordance with product standardization requirements. Removed Obligations The updated draft notification has removed specific marketplace operators’ obligations to: Conduct Identity Assurance Level 2 (IAL2) verification of business users before onboarding them on their platforms. Submit a registry of business users’ information to the ETDA. Retain business users’ information for a specified retention period. Implement measures to filter reviews of products subject to specific standards. Revisions Key revisions made to the draft notification include the following: The effective date has been extended to 120 days after the notification’s publication in the Government Gazette,