The Thai baht
Currency · THB · ฿ · 1 country
The baht started as a weight of silver, cast into the bullet-shaped lumps called photduang, and until 27 November 1902 one baht meant 15 grams of the metal. The decimal satang, a hundredth of a baht, came in 1897. The Bank of Thailand issues the currency today; its own Note Printing Works prints the notes and the Royal Thai Mint strikes the coins.
The sign
The ฿ sign received a computer codepoint in 1986 in the Thai Industrial Standard 620-2533, which later fed into ISO/IEC 8859-11 and then Unicode as U+0E3F. In Thai writing the law prescribes a different abbreviation, บ., under Section 7 of the Currency Act of B.E. 2501. Panama's balboa uses ฿ too.
- ISO code
- THB
- ISO number
- 764
- Subunit
- satang, 1/100
An amount, written out
฿1,234.50
- ฿1,234.50English, ThaiThailand
The sign in code
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, UTF-8
- HTML
฿฿- CSS
content: "\0E3F";- JavaScript
"\u0E3F"- UTF-8
0xE0 0xB8 0xBF- UTF-16
0x0E3F- UTF-32
0x00000E3F
Where the Thai baht is the official currency
Thailand uses it alone. The Bank of Thailand's series 17 notes have been in circulation since 28 July 2018.
About the Thai baht
How a weight of silver became money
Like the pound, the baht began as a unit of mass. Silver cast to fixed weights, in the bent bullet shape known as photduang, was probably in use as early as the Sukhothai period, and the system divided one baht into 8 fueang and 64 at. Foreigners called the unit the tical. The English text on Thai banknotes used that name until the second series of 1925.
Prince Jayanta Mongkol devised the decimal system of 100 satang to the baht, and King Chulalongkorn introduced it in 1897. Bullet coins were demonetised on 28 October 1904. Coins in the old units kept appearing until 1910. One old name outlived the reform: 25 satang is still commonly called a salueng, the old quarter baht, and so is the 25 satang coin.
Why Thai paper money was slow to catch on
King Mongkut decreed the first paper money, the mai, in 1853, when trade with the West was growing and hand-made photduang could not keep up. The notes were printed in black on white paper and stamped in red with the Chakra emblem and a crown against forgery, but people went on preferring the photduang.
In 1873 speculators melted down copper and tin coins worth more as metal than as money and shipped them abroad. Small change ran out, and people fell back on porcelain gambling chips that the gambling houses redeemed for money, chips whose holders lost out if a house lost its licence and they missed the deadline to exchange them. King Chulalongkorn answered with a low-value paper issue, the att kradat. It was withdrawn in 1875, once copper coins ordered from England arrived.
Three foreign banks received permission to issue notes in 1889, 1898 and 1899: the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, the Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, and the Banque de l'Indo-Chine. Their notes circulated for thirteen years among the banks' own customers, long enough for the English word bank to become the everyday Thai name for a banknote. A government order of treasury notes from Giesecke and Devrient in 1890 never reached circulation. The Siamese Currency Notes Act of 24 June 1902 set up a Thai Banknotes Department under the Ministry of Finance, which first served the public on 23 September 1902.
What the baht has been pegged to
From 1856 to 1864 the law fixed 5 baht to 3 Spanish dollars and 7 Indian rupees. Sterling came next, at 8 baht to the pound before 1880, 13 from 1908 and 12 from 1919. The yen served as anchor from 1942 to 1945. From 1956 to 1973 the rate was 20.8 baht to the US dollar and 20 until 1978, and from 1984 it was held at 25. That peg ended on 2 July 1997, when the baht was floated in the Asian financial crisis.
What circulates now
The Bank of Thailand's series 17 went into circulation on 28 July 2018. A polymer 20 baht note followed on 24 March 2022 and polymer 50 and 100 baht notes on 21 November 2025. All three are 72 millimetres tall, and their length steps from 138 to 144 to 150. The front of each carries a royal portrait and the back portraits of earlier kings. The 25 and 50 satang coins see regular use; the 1, 5 and 10 satang are rare.
Common questions
Questions about the Thai baht
Why was the Thai baht called the tical?
Tical was the name foreigners gave the baht, and the English text on Thai banknotes used it until the second series of 1925. It had no official sign and was abbreviated Tcs or Tcl. The Thai name baht is the traditional unit of weight that the silver money was cast to.
How is baht written in Thai?
As บาท in full, abbreviated บ. under Section 7 of the Currency Act of B.E. 2501. The satang is written สต., or st. in Latin letters. The ฿ sign is used mainly in Latin script; it entered computing through a Thai industrial standard of 1986 and reached Unicode as U+0E3F THAI CURRENCY SYMBOL BAHT. Panama's balboa shares the same character.
What is a salueng?
The old quarter of a baht. Before 1897 the baht divided into 8 fueang and 64 at, and the salueng, at a quarter, was the Thai version of the mace. When the baht went decimal, 25 satang took its place, but the name stayed: a 25 satang amount, and the 25 satang coin itself, are still commonly called a salueng. The Lao kip, by contrast, kept the at as its subunit.
When did the baht stop being pegged?
On 2 July 1997. Thailand had held the baht at 25 to the US dollar since 1984, and before that at 20.8 and then 20 from 1956 to 1978. The peg ended during the Asian financial crisis, and the baht has floated since. Earlier anchors were the Spanish dollar from 1856, sterling until 1942 and the Japanese yen from 1942 to 1945.