Take care when choosing the best online casino deposit options

Now that Christmas is over for another year many people enjoy heading to the shops in search of a bargain in the sales. This shopping bonanza has been with us for many years and has become almost a tradition for many people, but there is ample evidence that we are now changing the way we do all our shopping, including how we approach the January sales. This year even more of us did much of our Christmas shopping online than ever before, and it is likely that those people will also check out the sales offers online rather than facing the crowds in the shops. The internet is clearly going to continue becoming increasingly part of our everyday lives, so it is important that we understand both the benefits and the potential drawbacks associated with this technology. Here at onlinecasino.ie we are of course primarily interested in how we use the internet during our leisure time, particularly when it comes to playing casino games online. All financial transactions over the internet carry a degree of risk, and we all know that we need to be careful that we trust the site we are dealing with and take precautions to protect our personal data. As far as the first of these requirements is concerned we clearly recommend that our readers play their casino games at one of the online casinos on our recommended list, because we are as confident as we can be that not only will you enjoy the games they offer but that your personal details will be as secure as possible. There are however several other important factors to be taken into account when considering starting to play casino games at an online casino, particularly regarding how you are going to fund playing those games. All the online casinos offer a wide range of deposit options to enable their customers to pay stake money into their account, but unlike purchasing goods from an online retailer some of these options may cost you more money than you anticipated. When dealing with an online casino account it is very important to choose which of the many deposit options is not only the most convenient for you, but will also be free of unnecessary additional charges.

Before we go on to discuss the deposit options which enable you to fund playing casino games via your computer, we should point out that in Ireland both Ladbrokes and Paddy Power allow their online casino customers to manage their online accounts using cash at any of their high street betting shops. Clearly there is no better way to safeguard your personal banking information than using cash to fund playing casino games online, but unfortunately we do not all have easy access to a high street betting shop. There is however another way to use cash to fund an online casino account, and that is a pre-loaded card such as Paysafe or Ucash. These cards are similar to the pre-loaded currency cards which many people now use when holidaying abroad, and both of these cards are accepted by many of the online casinos on our recommended list.

If neither cash nor a pre-loaded card are a viable deposit option, there are still other ways to fund an online casino account which do not cost you extra money. Apart from cash the next best online casino deposit option is undoubtedly an e-wallet such as PayPal or Neteller. An e-wallet is effectively a separate bank account which can be used for a wide variety of internet transactions, including of course paying money into an online casino account. The advantages of using an e-wallet as an online casino deposit option are that not only does the online casino have no record of your primary bank account details, but your bank also has no knowledge of what you are doing with the money in your e-wallet account. Almost every online retailer will accept payment through a PayPal account for instance, and the same applies to most online casinos. An e-wallet account is very easy to set up and can be funded in any way you choose, but from a security and convenience point of view it is definitely one of the best online casino deposit options.

From one of the best online casino deposit options we now go on to discuss what we consider to be the worst choice, namely the credit card. There are a variety of very good reasons to use a credit card to purchase some goods and services online, not least of which is the built-in insurance element offered by the credit card issuers if the product or service proves unsatisfactory. However that reason is totally irrelevant when it comes to using a credit card to fund playing casino games online. Not only is your credit card issuer is most unlikely to reimburse you if you lose, they are also totally against you using their credit card to gamble, and will penalise you for doing it. Whilst we could argue that the way the banks apply a surcharge to any credit card transactions involving gambling is perhaps not fair or even wrong, we certainly can’t endorse gambling with borrowed money which is what you are doing if you use a credit card as an online casino deposit option. If you use a credit card to fund an online casino account you will be charged up to 2% of the value of the transaction, plus you will also be charged interest from day one because the banks will consider it to be a cash transaction equivalent to using an ATM to withdraw cash. Playing casino games at an online casino is gambling, and it is therefore likely that you could lose money. We all know that there will always be a built-in house edge in any of the games we play at any casino, online or real, but using a credit card to fund playing the games will put you at a significant monetary disadvantage before you have even started. If you must use plastic, at least make it a debit card rather than a credit card.