One chat, two transfers, one recovered
Whether a chat can stand in for a loan agreement is best answered by a single case in which the Supreme Court decided two transfers between the same two people, in the same app, in opposite ways. One was recovered; the other was not.
Phenhnung Thabthimthong
Partner · YACT Association
Published 6 August 2026 · Updated 14 August 2026
Two transfers differing only in the words
In Supreme Court judgment 3622/2568 a lender made two transfers to the same borrower through the same LINE conversation. The first, of 200,000 baht, was accompanied by a typed message saying the money was lent, and the borrower typed a reply of thanks. The second, a little over a month later, was of 100,000 baht, and the chat showed only two voice calls followed, seven minutes after the money arrived, by a sticker reading thank you. The Court decided the two differently.
The first was evidence of a loan
For the first, the Court treated the typed statement that the money was lent, together with the borrower's reply of thanks, as evidence in writing of a loan signed by the borrower under the first paragraph of section 653 of the Civil and Commercial Code, read with the first paragraphs of sections 8 and 9 of the Electronic Transactions Act B.E. 2544 (2001). Neither side appealed that part, and it stood as decided below.
The sticker was a signature, and the Court accepted that
For the second transfer the lender argued that the thank-you sticker amounted to a signature under section 9, and the Court did not reject that. Section 9 treats a signature as given where the method identifies the signatory and shows their intention regarding the message, by a method reliable and appropriate to its purpose. The case was therefore not lost on the signature.
It was lost because the words did not mean a loan
The Court held that nothing in the conversation showed the 100,000 baht to have been lent. Although section 7 forbids denying legal effect merely because a message is electronic, and although the sticker was a signature under section 9, section 8 requires the message to be accessible and capable of being reused with the meaning that money was lent before it is evidence in writing of a loan. Absent that meaning, no payment could be ordered.
The course-of-dealing argument was rejected
The lender went on to argue that since a 200,000 baht loan already sat in the same conversation, the later transfer should be taken by implication to be a loan too. The Court disagreed, reasoning that the second transfer came more than a month after the first, that the intervening conversation must have covered many things, and that nothing in it linked back to the earlier loan. The evidence of the first could not therefore be treated as part of the second.
Evidence held all along, filed too late
The lender sought leave on appeal to put in further screenshots showing the continuation of the conversation. The Court refused, since that material was likely in the lender's possession from the trial stage and so had to be filed before judgment below, under the last paragraph of section 88 of the Civil Procedure Code read with section 195. The practical lesson is not merely to keep the chat, but to put all of it in at first instance.
AUTHORITY
The judgments this rests on
Supreme Court judgment 3622/2568
Of two transfers in one chat, the one accompanied by a message saying the money was lent was evidence in writing of a loan; the one with only a thank-you sticker was not, even though the sticker counted as a signature under section 9, because section 8 also requires the message to carry the meaning of a loan.
Supreme Court judgment 1112/2566
LINE messages are electronic data and can be writing signed by the sender, but where the messages adduced do not suffice to show the money was lent, they are not evidence of a loan under the first paragraph of section 653.
QUESTIONS
Questions this raises
The money has gone and nothing was typed at the time.
Judgment 3622/2568 requires the message to carry the meaning of a loan and rejected an argument that it should be implied from an earlier loan in the same chat. What remains open is fresh correspondence in which such a meaning does appear — a demand the other side acknowledges, for instance. A transfer slip alone evidences that money left an account, not that it was lent.
The whole chat has been kept. Is anything else needed?
In the same case the lender had the continuing screenshots in hand but sought to put them in on appeal, and the Court refused because they should have gone in before judgment at first instance under the last paragraph of section 88 of the Civil Procedure Code. Keeping the material is therefore not enough: it has to be filed in full from the start, and the whole stretch of conversation is worth preserving rather than only the messages that seem important.
LAW
The legislation
- Civil and Commercial Code, section 653
- Electronic Transactions Act B.E. 2544 (2001), section 7
- Electronic Transactions Act B.E. 2544 (2001), section 8
- Electronic Transactions Act B.E. 2544 (2001), section 9
ENQUIRIES
