Thai Baht
Currency

Overview

The official currency of Thailand is Thai Baht. This currency has been serving since 1897 and has been in existence prior to being the national currency. This is referred to as Thai baht and denoted with symbol "฿".

The "baht” word in Thailand is the term for the unit of measure of gold. "Satang" is the subunit of baht breaking into 100 equal parts. According to ISO 4217 standard, the currency code is THB and the numeric code 764 is the numeric code.

Current value

Thai baht in the Southeast Asia is one among the strongest currencies. The value of this currency has stayed stronger against the US dollar in comparison to other currencies of the developing world.

During the Asian financial crisis its value declined to 56 baht to 1 dollar. But recovered quite well though the crises and the current value against the dollar is between 30-35 Thai baht. The central bank of Thailand handles the stable price and inflation rate and assists in stimulating economic growth.

Interesting facts

Some interesting facts regarding Thai baht is the image of the king on the banknotes. As the banknotes have the king’s image, putting the wallet in the back pocket allows people to sit on the king’s image.

In Thailand rural areas small denomination notes are displayed in the shops front sides as a respect to the king. Similarly, the 2 and 10 baht coin are so identical that often vending machines stay confused and the coins are taken for another value.

Structure

Baht is based on decimal system and the currency unit is serving since 1897, though earlier it was based on metric system. The Bank of Thailand performs the role of the central bank of the country.

Besides, the currency issuance it is also responsible for the baht banknotes printing. The banknotes for each face value have different color patterns so that they are different from each other. The 20 baht is green, 50 are blue, 100 are red, 500 are purple and 1000 are gray. The sizes vary based on the face values such that the higher the face value, larger the note size. The scripts on the front and the back are in Thai language.