Online casino deposit options need careful thought

Over the years, certainly since the war most of us have been able to work less hours and have more leisure time than our parents and perhaps more importantly have more money in our pockets to spend on leisure activities. That increased leisure time has also led to the creation of several new business sectors designed to help us enjoy our time away from work, which then of course employ more people and so increase the overall wealth we have to spend. One of the beneficiaries of our increased wealth has been the gambling sector, which has gone from being primarily gambling on horse racing or the greyhounds either at the track or through the high street betting shops to an online industry offering us a vast array of gambling options without even having to leave our homes. The online sports gambling sites have meant that sports fans now have far more gambling options than ever before, but it is the introduction of online casinos which has undoubtedly had the greatest effect on our gambling habits. Many of us did of course play casino games such as roulette and blackjack at a real casino, and many more regularly played bingo at a bingo club but the online casinos have been able to significantly increase the number of people playing casino games even more by offering far more options. The huge array of online slots games available at our online casinos has encouraged a whole new audience to start playing gambling games. In common with most other leisure activities however, playing casino games online will probably cost you money and again in line with almost every other online financial transaction it is important we make the right choices to protect our privacy and keep our personal data secure. All the online casinos on our recommended list here at onlinecasino.ie have effective management systems to protect their customers, and they all offer a wide range of deposit options to make funding our accounts as easy as possible, but when it comes to funding an online casino account some of those options are better than others. Most of us for example would probably choose a credit card to pay for other products or services we are sourcing through an internet site, because there is a built-in insurance element to compensate us should anything turn out to be unsatisfactory. All the online casinos also offer most credit cards within their range of acceptable deposit options, but there are a number of reasons why a credit card is probably not the best way to fund playing casino games online. Many people would say that the most important of those reasons is that gambling with borrowed money, which is what you are actually doing if you use a credit card is never a good idea and is certainly not to be recommended under any circumstances. There are however other reasons for not using a credit card to fund an online casino account, the most obvious of which is that it will cost you money. Rightly or wrongly the banks supplying the credit cards do not like us gambling with their money, and they will all apply an additional surcharge of up to 2% on any transaction involving gambling. We all know that it is likely that we may lose money whilst playing casino games, but to start with a 2% loss before placing a bet makes no sense at all. On top of that using a credit card to deposit cash into an online account is considered to be the equivalent of withdrawing money from an ATM with a credit card, and is therefore subject to interest from day one irrespective of whether you routinely settle your credit card account every month. You would have to have a very good reason to select using a credit card to fund playing casino games online, particularly as there are so many better deposit options available on every online casino site.

Before we go on to discuss some of the better deposit options we should mention the use of a debit card. Clearly using a debit card as a way of funding playing casino games is far better than using a credit card, because you are not playing with borrowed money, but be aware that some banks also apply a surcharge to debit card transactions related to gambling. Most people who are used to dealing with suppliers on the internet will have heard the name Pay Pal, and may even already have a Pay Pal account which they use to purchase goods online. A Pay Pal account is what is generally known as an e-wallet, which is a separate bank account specifically designed to be used for internet transactions. Almost all the online casinos list one or more e-wallet providers among their acceptable deposit options, including Pay Pal and Neteller, and there is no doubt that an e-wallet is therefore a very good way for us to fund playing casino games online. Because an e-wallet is a separate account, your bank will not know what you are using it for, nor will the online casino operator have access to your personal banking data so using an e-wallet as a deposit option will provide you with both greater privacy and better data security than most other options.

Most of the online casinos featured on our recommended list also include a number of pre-loaded cards in their range of acceptable deposit options, which again offers much greater security and privacy than either a credit card or a debit card. Many of us may be familiar with the concept of a pre-loaded card by using one as a foreign currency account when on holiday abroad. Pre-loaded cards such as Paysafe or Ucash are both normally accepted by most online casinos as a way to fund an online casino account, and they have the added advantage that you can only gamble the money you have on the card, so budgeting your gambling spend is very much easier.