Thailand has introduced Thailand Immigration Management System (THIM), the country’s first web and mobile application for foreigners entering the country. It enables international tourists visiting Thailand to complete their arrival registration digitally before they land, reducing processing time to just 3 minutes.
Developed by Digital Identity Co., Ltd in partnership with the Thailand Immigration Bureau, THIM leverages Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services to modernise the immigration process.
“Thailand’s immigration system serves approximately 30 million international tourists annually, and it is our responsibility to ensure that every traveller’s experience at our borders reflects the modern, welcoming nation we are. THIM positions Thailand at the forefront of Southeast Asia’s digital immigration transformation through a national mobile platform,” said Pol.Maj.Gen Pratya Prasarnsuk, deputy commissioner of Immigration Bureau.
Modernising the immigration process
THIM’s architecture leverages AWS services deployed in the AWS Asia Pacific (Bangkok) Region across:
- Document verification: Using AI-powered optical character recognition (OCR), text is extracted from passports to support e-KYC workflows
- Compute and orchestration: Amazon EC2 for scalable compute capacity, Amazon EKS for containerised workloads, and Elastic Load Balancing for high availability.
- Security and compliance: Amazon GuardDuty for continuous threat detection, AWS Security Hub for centralised security posture management, and AWS Key Management Service (AWS KMS) and AWS Certificate Manager (ACM) for end-to-end encryption of and secure communications between systems
Vatsun Thirapatarapong, country manager, AWS Thailand, said: “THIM is a proof point that when you pair visionary leadership with world-class cloud technology, you can deliver outcomes that once seemed mutually exclusive: a seamless traveller experience and stronger national security, achieved together.”
“We built THIM to make sure it’s wide open and secure at the same time. This is just the beginning of what a cloud-native services centre can do for the Immigration Bureau and the millions of travellers it serves,” said Natakorn Tanachaihirun, CEO, Digital Identity Co., Ltd.
THIM currently supports English, Russian, Japanese, and Chinese languages, with plans to add more languages in the coming months. Looking ahead, other capabilities will include appointment booking, e-Extension, issuance of transaction-related certification documents, and other immigration-related digital services.
