There are so many online casinos popping up at the moment that its becoming increasingly difficult for our team to keep track of everything, review the casinos and rule out the rogue ones, but we always manage to keep up with the demand. One of the things we always look out for and review are the depositing methods! In this post we look into the best/safest methods of depositing to an online casino, from paypal to bitcoin!
Credit and Debit Cards
Credit (Visa, MasterCard) and debit cards (Visa Electron/Debit or MasterCard Maestro/Switch) may seem old-fashioned, but they’re still the favoured approach for many customers. Everybody has a credit/debit card or two or three, and they’re accepted more or less everywhere. Credit cards carry the additional benefit (or curse, depending on how much control you have over your spending) that money can be deposited even if you don’t have it. With debit cards, on the other hand, you’ll need to have your money in the account before you can use it. Another benefit of credit cards is that you should be protected for fraud and theft. If somebody tries to steal your details, they’ll almost certainly be foiled. Debit cards often give you such protection, but it’s not guaranteed, and gaming transactions won’t necessarily be covered.
However, there are some advantages to using a debit card, and the companies who run these cards are often more relaxed about letting you use your money to gamble. Credit card companies, on the other hand, are a little funny about giving their customers carte-blanche to run up huge casino bills. Some of them will instantly block casino deposits, with MasterCard being particularly aggravating here. MasterCard will also often stop you from withdrawing money back to your card, so again, if you intend to be making regular withdrawals, MasterCard would be a poor choice. Using these cards to fund e-wallets is one way around these concerns, although it won’t be foolproof. Essentially, if you’re using a credit card, you can expect to be regularly phoning up the card company to clear blocked transactions.
There’s another disadvantage of credit cards, and that’s significant transaction fees. You can expect to be charged in the region of 1.5-3%, and some companies will levy ‘cash advance fees’ in addition. These are generally small sums (say, £5), but can be very annoying if you’re only depositing small sums, like £10 or £20. These charges are often issued by the credit card companies themselves, although you may get extra charges from the casinos as well. Debit cards frequently come with fewer charges, although they won’t necessarily be as cheap as electronic payment systems.
e-Wallet or e-Money Accounts
21st-century gambling requires a 21st-century payment system. And e-Wallets might just offer such facilities. Skrill/Moneybookers, Neteller, Click2Pay, and i-BANQ are the best known of the main e-Wallet options. The idea is that you deposit money into your e-Wallet account – usually with a more traditional form of payment, such as a credit/debit card or a bank transfer. Once the money is in, though, it can be instantly transferred to supporting sites. Money can be transferred back to the e-Wallet account, and although this isn’t instantaneous, the transactions are generally much faster than with credit/debit cards.
While the latter can take 2-5 working days, an e-Wallet transfer will often be there within eight hours – even at the weekends and on holidays.
e-Wallet transactions are generally free, in contrast to cards. Talking of which, many of the companies even offer physical cards, so you can use e-Wallet money even with sites that only support credit/debit cards, and can withdraw money at ATMs – albeit with a small charge. Be aware, though, that many of these cards will use MasterCard, so you would still have problems using them to deposit at casino and gaming sites.
It can be harder to obain an e-Wallet in the first place, and you may have to provide several forms of identification – including current passports. You may also find that some bonus offers will be closed off to you – anyone using a new-fangled e-Wallet is likely to be tagged by the gaming site as being a little more worldly than the typical casino-fodder. The lack of support can also be a problem, although most casino and gaming sites support Skrill/Moneybookers and Neteller – Click2Pay and i-BANQ are less well-covered. You also won’t necessarily get the same fraud/theft protection as with a credit card. However, as a means of using a central fund to supply various gaming sites, an e-Wallet (particularly Skrill or Neteller) will be an exceptionally fast, cheap, and easy option that should result in very few blocked transactions, just smooth seamless performance.
PayPal
The auction-friendly PayPal will generally be classed as an e-Wallet. However, it can be a trickier payment option to use than other forms. PayPal are generally more reluctant to allow their product to be used for gambling, so you may sometimes find transactions blocked for spurious reasons. They are becoming less sensitive to this, though, and an increasing number of gaming sites are offering PayPal as an option.
Assuming it’s supported, PayPal’s size and clout should get you better protection, and PayPal won’t disclose any of your details to the other side, so overall security is vastly superior. However, withdrawal times can be longer, and transaction fees will often be levied. You may also be hit with lower deposit limits – at Intercasino, for instance, up to £25,000 can be deposited using Neteller and Skrill, and as much as £10,000 with credit/debit cards, but PayPal is restricted to no more than £500 a time. A more standard e-Wallet is likely to be easier, faster and cheaper for gambling, although the more security-conscious may prefer the extra protection and relative anonymity offered by PayPal.
Pre-paid Credit Cards
Pre-paid credit cards, like Entropay, let you fund a ‘card’ with money. Like PayPal, the details won’t be passed on to the gambling site, so these are great for those who don’t fancy their details being disseminated across the web. However, the costs can be very high, with fees for transactions often exceeding those of normal credit cards. And if you don’t spend money for a certain period, dormancy charges may eat into your funds. The idea is good but, so far, the execution of these companies is somewhat lacking. If you want to keep your banking/card details safe, you’ll probably find PayPal a more workable solution.
Vouchers
For one-off situations, voucher payment services, like uKash and PaySafe, can be good options. You buy a voucher for a certain amount, and can use this to deposit cash at gaming sites. You’ll be supplied with a number, so the transactions are safe and anonymous. As an everyday means of funding gambling accounts, though, they can be somewhat unwieldy. You can’t withdraw money to vouchers – you’ll need to have a cheque or bank transfer instead. And depositing further money will require a new voucher. However, if you think you’ll only need to be funding one account, and one time only, a voucher is a safe, if slightly awkward, option.
Bitcoin
We can expect to see a few more Bitcoin sites in the future. In the meantime, though, it remains a shadowy option. In use, this form of payment works rather like an e-Wallet, and you can make fast transfers to and from your account. The currency is totally anonymous, so the gambling site probably won’t receive any details about you at all. The main difference, though, is that you aren’t dealing in pounds, dollars, or euros. Instead, Bitcoin is, itself, the currency. The total worth of your account will depend on the current valuation of Bitcoin, and this fluctuates wildly from day to day.
In truth, Bitcoin remains a rather exotic and murky choice. It’s starting to take off as a gaming option in the USA, where severe gambling restrictions can make it difficult to fund accounts. The UK, though, has yet to really explore this option, while the ever-changing value of the currency itself makes it a high-risk option. For UK gamblers, then, we can’t yet recommend this option. However, uptake may improve in the future.