Thailand's WORPT app lets foreign tourists convert USDT and USDC into baht under the SEC's TouristDigiPay sandbox, a month after the country approved Bitcoin and Ether ETFs. How it works and the limits attached.
Thailand has spent a year building ways to let crypto in without letting it loose, and the latest one is aimed at tourists. A new payment app, WORPT, lets foreign visitors convert cryptocurrency into baht and spend it at shops and restaurants by scanning the QR codes used across the country, without needing a Thai bank account, Bloomberg reported on 13 November.
The timing is deliberate: the country is trying to revive tourist spending, and Bitcoin price fell below $70,000 on Friday, to $69,187 at 07:15 UTC according to CoinGecko, which makes crypto holders a less obvious source of it.
Tourists load USDT or USDC into the app, convert to baht, and pay through PromptPay, the QR system that runs most retail payments in Thailand. Merchants never touch crypto; they receive baht through the normal rails. The same baht balance also funds physical and virtual Visa prepaid cards, according to the launch materials.
The app comes from Wipay and Waan Exchange. Waan was founded by Chaval Jiaravanon, a member of the Chearavanont family behind the CP Group, which gives the product a backer with retail reach. Tether and The Mall Group are named as launch partners.
WORPT operates inside TouristDigiPay, the regulatory sandbox the Thai SEC announced in August 2025 with the finance ministry, the anti-money-laundering office and the tourism ministry.
The sandbox runs for up to 18 months and sets hard limits: 50,000 baht a month at small vendors, 500,000 baht at merchants that have completed know-your-merchant checks. Above 50,000 baht a month per person, operators must verify where the crypto came from using blockchain forensics, and any funds from flagged wallets are refused. Baht can only be converted back to crypto up to the amount originally exchanged, and only to the same wallet.
Those are the conditions that let the Bank of Thailand's e-money operators sit between the crypto and the shop. Digital assets themselves still cannot be used directly for payment in Thailand.
WORPT is the second controlled opening in a month. On 16 October, SEC rules took effect allowing Bitcoin and Ether ETFs to list on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, with coins held by SEC-regulated local custodians, no margin lending, and a mandatory risk check before trading. The same rulebook stops brokers steering ordinary investors into foreign crypto ETFs, so domestic demand is pointed at local products.
The shape is consistent. Crypto money is welcome in Thailand if it arrives through a licensed local intermediary, converts to baht or a listed security before it does anything, and comes with a cap and a KYC check. Bhutan and Brazil launched tourist crypto payment schemes in 2025, as Bloomberg noted, but neither paired them with an ETF regime this tightly ring-fenced.
The number that matters is uptake. The sandbox gives WORPT 18 months to show that tourists who hold stablecoins will actually spend them at a 50,000 baht cap, and that merchants on PromptPay notice the difference. If they do, expect the caps to rise and the ETF list to grow beyond Bitcoin and Ether, which the SEC has said depends on liquidity and investor protection. If they do not, Thailand will have proved it can let crypto in safely, and that not many people walked through the door.
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