You keep the car, they keep the book

Drive any distance outside Bangkok and you will pass the signs. A phone number, a picture of a motorcycle, and four words: money for your registration book.

This archive has now described three different ways to borrow against a vehicle, and they are distinguished by two questions: who has the thing, and who owns it.

Three arrangements, two questions

In hire purchase — article 180 Ownership passes last — you possess the vehicle and the finance company owns it. Title passes to you on the final instalment, which is why that article was called Ownership passes last.

In a pawnshop — article 106 It asks about the object — the lender takes the object. You keep ownership, but the thing itself sits in the shop.

In a vehicle title loan you keep both. The vehicle stays with you and the registration stays in your name.

What the lender takes is the book.

The regulatory definition is precise about it. In the Bank of Thailand’s own words, this is lending to a person who owns a vehicle, where the operator receives the vehicle registration book; or arranges a contract, document or other evidence by which the owner transfers the registration in advance as security for the debt; or arranges one that lets the operator take the vehicle and sell it, or deal with it otherwise, to pay the debt — while the borrower keeps possessing and using the vehicle as its owner.

Read the second and third limbs. Not only the book. In some arrangements, a transfer signed in advance, or an authority to sell, held against the day you default.

What it costs, and where the number comes from

The business was not always supervised. In 2019 the Bank of Thailand brought vehicle title lending under its regime for supervised personal loans, requiring a licence and imposing a rate ceiling.

That ceiling started at 28 per cent a year. From 1 August 2020 it has been 24 per cent — interest, penalties, service charges and every fee together, on an effective, reducing-balance basis. Even the cost of repossessing the vehicle has to fit inside it. And a borrower who wants to pay off early, in whole or in part, may be charged nothing for doing so.

And here is what the regulator’s own comparison page shows. The Bank of Thailand publishes a public database of title-loan products, updated continuously — the copy read for this article was dated 26 September 2026.

Row after row of it gives the same figure: not exceeding 24 per cent. One lender’s motorcycle product showed no fee at all on facilities of ฿5,000 to ฿100,000 over three to thirty-six months. One showed 23.99 per cent. The rest, overwhelmingly, showed 24.

Be careful about what that does and does not prove. “Not exceeding 24 per cent” is a published maximum. It is not evidence that every borrower pays 24 per cent, and this article does not claim that.

What it does show is where the advertised ceiling sits. When a regulator sets a maximum and then publishes a comparison table in which almost every entry states that maximum as its own, the ceiling has stopped being a limit on the market and started being the market’s reference point.

Compare that to the ladder this archive has assembled. Article 180 Ownership passes last found hire purchase capped at 10 per cent for a new car, 15 for a used one and 23 for a motorcycle. Article 185 Principal, then interest, then penalty found the student loan fund capped at 1 per cent with compounding prohibited. Twenty-four per cent sits at the top of every regulated consumer rate this site has documented — and article 149’s illegal lending apps sit somewhere above it entirely outside the law.

The thing the regulator did that nobody mentions

A comparison database is not a small thing, and this archive has been circling its absence for months.

Article 184 Graded by the buyer found a durian grower unable to verify the grade that determined their income. Article 190 Present at the counter found medicines sorted into classes by ministerial announcements this site could not obtain. Article 191 Ninety days from knowing concluded that the binding constraint on challenging the state was not the law but knowing.

Here the regulator simply publishes the comparison itself — products, limits, terms and fees, lender by lender, dated, free, and in Thai.

That does not make the product cheap and it is not an endorsement of anything. It means that in this one corner of Thai consumer finance, the information asymmetry that makes borrowing dangerous has been addressed by the state doing the comparing.

What is actually being secured

Return to the definition, because the three limbs are not the same risk.

Handing over the registration book is a real constraint but a soft one. You cannot readily sell or re-finance a vehicle whose book is in someone else’s safe. The vehicle is still yours and still on your drive.

An advance transfer is a different instrument. It is a signed step toward the lender becoming the owner, prepared before any default has occurred. And an authority to sell goes further again: it is the lender’s route to the vehicle itself.

This article has no evidence about how often the second or third limbs are used, or what happens when they are, and makes no claim about either. It notes only that the regulatory definition contemplates all three, which is itself worth knowing before signing anything.

And that is where this piece stops. It is not advice, it does not compare arrangements, and it does not tell anybody whether a title loan is a good idea. It describes who ends up holding what.

---

Common misconceptions

“They take your car.” In a title loan you keep the vehicle and the registration remains in your name. The lender takes the registration book, and in some arrangements a transfer signed in advance or an authority to sell.

“It’s the same as hire purchase.” The opposite. In hire purchase the finance company owns the vehicle until the last payment; here you own it throughout.

“It’s unregulated.” The Bank of Thailand brought the business under supervision in 2019, requiring a licence and imposing a rate ceiling.

“The rate is whatever they like.” The ceiling is 24 per cent a year inclusive of every fee, reduced from 28 on 1 August 2020. Early repayment may not be charged for.

“Every lender charges 24 per cent.” Lenders publish a maximum of “not exceeding 24 per cent”. That is an advertised ceiling, not proof of what any particular borrower pays.