Thermal memory effect (TME) is the ability of certain shape memory alloys (SMAs) to remember the previous arrest temperature during full thermal cycling (martensite ⇌ austenite) immediately following partial thermal cycling (martensite ⇌ austenite + martensite). In this study, the heating rate dependency of the temperature memory effect of a binary NiTi SMA has been investigated focusing on the phase transformation kinetics. The full thermal cycling experiments were carried out after a partial thermal cycling at varied rates of heating, i.e. 10–50 ℃ min−1. The results show that TME diminishes progressively with increasing heating rates and is entirely suppressed at a critical rate of 50 ℃ min−1. This suppression is attributed to reduced elastic strain relaxation and dynamic reorganization of martensitic variants under rapid thermal conditions. Activation energy calculations using the Arrhenius equation further show that the energy barrier for phase transformation as 67.3 kJ mol−1. These findings provide a way to eliminate TME by adopting higher heating rates, which enhance the reliability of SMA-based components/devices for applications, such as actuators, medical stents, and robotic grippers.