Thai Baht (THB)

Established during World War II, the Bank of Thailand manages monetary policy through an inflation-targeting framework — with a 2026 target range of 1% to 3% headline inflation. The bank maintains a floating exchange rate, allowing market forces to determine the baht's value while intervening only to smooth excessive volatility. As of October 2026, the policy rate stands at 1.00% — an accommodative stance reflecting Thailand's subdued growth environment. The economy expanded just 1.9% in the second quarter, even as AI-related semiconductor exports provided a bright spot.

Long before modern banknotes, Siam's commerce ran on pot duang — rounded metallic pieces commonly called bullet coins in English. Cowrie shells and baked-clay tokens also circulated as money. As international trade expanded in the nineteenth century, King Mongkut attempted paper currency in 1853 because handmade metallic money simply couldn't keep pace with growing economic demand. Foreign commercial banks later received permission to issue their own notes in Siam — gradually familiarising the population with paper money and laying essential groundwork for the modern system that followed.

The Siamese Currency Notes Act of June 24, 1902, centralised paper money for the first time. Government-issued notes reached the public on September 23 of that year — printed by Thomas De La Rue in England, on only one side. These Uniface Banknotes carried denominations from ฿1 to ฿1,000. Thailand later developed domestic printing capacity, a shift accelerated by World War II — when reliance on overseas suppliers proved dangerously impractical. Some wartime Series 5 notes were even produced at Japan's Note Printing Works during the occupation period.

Before July 2, 1997, the baht was effectively pegged to a basket of currencies — an arrangement that masked enormous financial imbalances underneath. When speculators attacked, the Bank of Thailand spent roughly US$24 billion in reserves defending the currency before abandoning the peg entirely. That single day is widely considered the opening event of the Asian Financial Crisis. Thailand adopted inflation targeting in 2000 and today circulates five banknotes (฿20 through ฿1,000). Three — ฿20, ฿50, and ฿100 — have transitioned to polymer, lasting roughly four times longer than their paper predecessors.