Online casinos offer a variety of deposit options

The very first decision that any new online casino games player has to make is which of the wide range of deposit options offered by online casinos is most suitable for their personal circumstances. Our primary objective here at onlinecasino.ie is of course to do all we can to assist new online casino games players, particularly in the early stages of their online casino experience, so here is some information regarding the various deposit options and what the individual online casinos will accept as a way of funding their casino games. There are several factors which should be taken into account when making that decision, not least of which is how easy it is to also take money out of your online casino account when hopefully you win. It isn’t always as easy as you might think. The other factors to be taken into account are however as important if not more so, and come under the headings of cost and privacy and security. Perhaps we should start with what for many people is the obvious choice when purchasing goods and services online, the credit card. There are very good reasons for using a credit card to purchase goods online, particularly if you don’t know the supplier because of the insurance element provided by the card issuer in the event of faulty goods, but that is irrelevant when using a credit card as an online casino deposit option. The first thing we should say when considering the use of a credit card to put money into an online casino account is that you are effectively gambling with borrowed money, not something we would ever recommend in any circumstances. However that is not the only reason to be wary of using a credit card as an online casino deposit option. The banks do not like their credit cards being used for anything to do with gambling, and will therefore apply a surcharge of approximately 2% to any transaction associated with gambling. In addition to that such a transaction is also considered to be a cash withdrawal equivalent to withdrawing money from an ATM using a credit card, and will therefore start to attract interest from day one at credit card rates. When playing casino games at an online casino or even a real casino, we know that the house edge over which we have no control is already against us winning, but it is surely not a good idea to start playing at a further disadvantage simply by choosing the wrong deposit option.

Most of us have a debit card linked to our current account, and almost all online casinos accept the most popular debit cards as a deposit option. Using a debit card as a way to fund playing casino games will attract no additional charges from the banks and clearly there are no interest charges because you can only use money you have in your account. There are however a couple of other factors which may be worth considering, and that is that the online casino clearly has access to your account details if you use a debit card, and of course your bank will know that you are gambling even if they do not charge you. That is also true should you decide to fund your online casino account with a bank transfer or even a cheque, both of which are perfectly acceptable options for most online casinos, although there is of course a time delay when using a cheque because the cheque needs to clear before the funds become available to use.

Another possible online casino deposit option using plastic is a pre-loaded card such as Paysafe or Ucash. Between them all the online casinos on our recommended list will accept one or both of these prepaid cards as a deposit option, although it should be pointed out that 888 will not transfer cash out of your account onto either of these cards so they are certainly not suitable if you are playing at the 888 casino.

Before we go on to what are fast becoming the best online casino deposit option, we should at least mention what is clearly the most secure means of managing an online casino account and that is cash. BetFred, Paddy Power and Ladbrokes all allow their customers to deposit and withdraw money to and from their online casino account using cash at any of their high street betting shops. Setting up this facility is quick and easy, and using cash is an excellent way to control your gambling activities provided of course that you have reasonable access to one of these betting shops during their opening hours.

Last but not least we come to the modern way to pay for internet transactions, an e-wallet. The first e-wallet was introduced by PayPal a few years ago and rapidly became the payment method of choice for all purchases on the e-Bay trading portal. As more and more people started to buy and sell goods on e-Bay so the Pay Pal e-wallet became more recognised and widely used. Almost every internet trading site will now accept payments from a PayPal account and the online casinos are no exception. The primary advantage of using an e-wallet to fund an online casino account is that the online casino operator does not have or need access to your bank details, vastly improving your financial security. It is also true that your bank will not know what you are using your e-wallet account for, an important privacy issue for many people. Opening an e-wallet account is very simple, and you can then choose to fund that account almost any way you choose. You can even use a credit card if you must and there will be no additional charges. There is no doubt that using an e-wallet account as an online casino deposit option has many advantages in terms of privacy and security, and it also makes withdrawals easier than some alternatives. We should point out that PayPal is not the only e-wallet provider and most online casinos will also accept a Neteller account or a Moneybookers account as a deposit option.