Bank of Thailand: missing piece in the country’s digital ID stack is data portability

Thailand has a healthy national digital ID platform alongside a real-time payments system that’s woven into everyday life. But according to the country’s national bank, Thailand should build a third layer to bring more people into the financial system.

The country boasts more than 30 million users of the national digital ID, which it began issuing in 2023. The digital payment platform PromptPay has reached 92 million registered accounts, and recently hit a single-day peak of 96 million transactions, which is a tenfold increase since 2019, according to The Nation.

Speaking at Money 20/20 Asia 2026 in Bangkok, Daranee Saeju believes the next step will unlock greater financial inclusion. The senior Bank of Thailand official, who’s deputy governor of Strategy and Special Projects, said digital finance needs another layer of digital public infrastructure (DPI).

“We can confidently say we have digital identity; we have digital payments,” Saeju said in her presentation. “And now we must push further to unlock the full potential of the third layer: data sharing.”

The issue as Saeju sees it is what she terms “data islands” — fragmented data for businesses and individuals that can leave them financially invisible. And this causes safety and inclusivity problems, according to the finance official.

Saeju opened her talk by making the case through the story of a durian farmer named Mali. Mali accepts digital payments via PromptPay, and via her verified national digital identity receives government Covid-19 subsidies through a connected bank account.

However, when Mali wants to get a loan for a smart irrigation system, the bank has no way to assess her viability because Mali lacks portable proof of her digital activities. In a nutshell, this is what Saeju wants to change.

The solution she proposes is a data layer. This would enable the sharing of data that would allow individuals like Mali to prove her transactions and financial activity, among other relevant details. “Individuals and businesses should be able to access, control, and share their own data to wherever it creates value for them,” she said.

Saeju emphasized the importance of infrastructure and governance to realize this data ecosystem, and that it would be consent based to ensure data still “belongs to the people.” But the financial footprint would then become portable, opening up greater financial inclusivity. Safety was another talking point as siloed data means the financial system cannot so easily parse patterns of criminal activity especially as AI-driven fraud grows, the banker claimed.

Bank of Thailand plans data sharing initiatives 

The Bank of Thailand is advancing two initiatives in response. Through its “Your Data” program the central bank is creating national standards for a consent‑based data‑sharing framework that will give individuals greater control over how their personal information is used.

Launched in October 2024, the “Your Data” initiative was scheduled to be operational by 2026, according to reporting at the time.

The central bank is also developing a digital loan document system that allows borrowers to use verified transaction histories as financial credentials. This will replace paper records and enable banks to approve loans within minutes.

Financial institutions should view data sharing as a commercial opportunity instead of just obligatory compliance, Saeju urged, and encouraged technology providers to build interoperable, consent‑driven systems. Similarly, she called on data holders in sectors such as agriculture, telecoms and e‑commerce to advance responsible data use.

She also linked Thailand’s efforts to the wider global agenda, noting that Bangkok will host the IMF–World Bank Annual Meetings in October, where advancing safe and inclusive digital finance will be a central theme.

“Our goal is not just to digitize finance, but to humanize it,” she said. “Because behind every data set is a person — someone whose potential depends very much on whether we get this right.”

Article Topics

data sharing  |  digital ID  |  digital public infrastructure  |  financial inclusion  |  interoperability  |  Thailand