Paying Electric Bills Online in Thailand

When I first moved to Thailand I was hoping to pay all my bills online. That wasn’t possible but now you can pay your electric bill online using the MEA Smart Life app.

Taking the paper bill to a shop wasn’t a hard task but it did have several downsides such as paying a surcharge and not being able to do this if you were out of the country. Now this new app has solved (most ) problems and allows people to pay their electric bill online.

The App

So the good new is the App is available for IOS and Android in Thai and English. To get setup all you need is an old paper bill to get your customer reference numbers. The app is useful in that it helps you set everything up. Take a look at this link which shows the process on the MEA website (in English). I was setup within two minutes of downloading the app – it was so easy.

Something which I like is that the app will send you a notification when your meter has been read and show the amount due. They will also state the due date as well. I remember a few times when I didn’t pay a bill as I forgot about checking my mailbox or it just didn’t arrive. Now with this App you have none of those problems.

You can also check your payment history which is great if you are keeping track of your spending or want to see when you use the most electric.

Payment

The key benefit of this app is that that it lets you pay online via a credit or debit card. This means you can pay your bill wherever you are in the world. So many people are not here on due date or live in Thailand only part of the year so this is what they need.

Personally I prefer paying on card as I get points and will get billed the following month. If paying by credit card you will have to pay a surcharge of around 8 baht per transaction. Considering I used to pay 15 baht fee to pay in cash at a shop I’m more than happy with 8 baht for the convenience it brings.

The good news is you can use the app and make payments in shops as with the paper bill. Just press a button an it will create a bar code which can be scanned as normal.

Is it Paperless?

Unfortunately it doesn’t make the whole process paperless. In my experience if I pay as soon as I get the first notification that my meter has been read I won’t get a paper bill. If I wait a few days then they will send the bill in the post. Regardless of when I pay I always get a paper receipt. Whilst I love the idea of paperless billing we have to accept that here in Thailand that isn’t always possible but it seems the MEA are at least moving in the right direction.

In the future I hope I can just provide a credit card which is automatically charged and a receipt sent via the app. Maybe this will come at some time…

Any Problems With it?

Someone mentioned to me that they couldn’t use the app as their landlord had already used the app with the electric account registered to the condo. In order to get around this the landlord had to remove the meter from their app which then allowed my friend to add it to his app. Apart from this I haven’t heard of any problems from people using the app.