28 SEP 2026 — Thailand's Immigration Bureau formally launched its visitor app, THIM, on 25 September. THIM already handles the digital arrival card every foreign visitor must file, and the bureau plans to move visa extensions, 90-day reporting and visa on arrival into the same app.
To do that, it reads the chip in a visitor's passport and checks their face.
What THIM does now
THIM, short for Thai Immigration Application, has been available on the App Store, Google Play and Huawei's AppGallery since 1 August. The Nation reports that it had passed 600,000 downloads and 580,000 registered users by the official launch.
Two features are live: the Thailand Digital Arrival Card, the online form foreign visitors file before arrival, and Explore Thailand, which offers coupons and privileges from partner businesses.
The arrival card still works on the bureau's website. A visitor does not have to install the app to enter the country.
What is coming
The bureau lists queue booking, certificates of stay, visa extensions, 90-day reporting and visa on arrival at authorised checkpoints as future functions. Together they would put most of a long-stay foreigner's dealings with immigration into one app.
For long-stay visa holders in Thailand, 90-day reporting is the familiar chore. A working app version would save trips to an immigration office, if it arrives and works.
Police Lieutenant General Panumas Boonyalug, the bureau's commissioner, said the app was built to make entry and stays in Thailand "more convenient, faster, safer, and more seamless" for foreign nationals, ExpatGo reports.
What it collects
According to The Nation, THIM uses the phone's NFC reader to pull data from the passport's electronic chip, then uses facial recognition with a liveness check to confirm the person holding the phone is the passport's owner.
The bureau says it handles personal information under Thailand's Personal Data Protection Act of 2019. It describes encryption in transit and at rest, biometric data kept separate from other personal data, access controls, activity logging and threat monitoring. The app runs on Amazon Web Services in its Bangkok region, which keeps the data in Thailand.
What a visitor should weigh
A passport-chip read and a face scan go beyond what the web arrival card asks for. In return, the app offers convenience now and more services later.
The bureau has published its security measures. In the coverage we found, it has not said how long biometric data is kept, whether it is shared with other agencies, or how a user can delete an account. A visitor would want answers to all three before choosing the app over the website.
For most short-stay tourists, the website remains the simpler route. For long-stay residents, the planned features will matter more, and so will the answers.
How it got here
The app was first announced earlier in the year, Khaosod English reported in May, before the bureau opened it to the public in August and launched it formally this week.
