As the internet becomes more and more important in how we manage our daily lives, so does the need for us to be vigilant in how we protect our personal data and particularly our financial details. Apart from simply seeking information through an internet server, almost everything else requires us to pay for goods and services in some way which in turn usually means that we are forced to provide some personal data. In the majority of circumstances most of us would probably reach for a credit card for online payments, certainly when we are purchasing products from an internet site we have not used before. Choosing a credit card for online payments of that sort makes sense because of the built-in insurance automatically provided by the card issuer in the event of the goods or services proving unsatisfactory. That reasoning does not however apply to every type of online transaction, particularly when it comes to paying money into an online casino account so that you can play casino games online. Credit cards are of course included in the list of acceptable deposit options for every online casino on our recommended list, but it is far from the best choice for most of us. Not only is the insurance element of using a credit card totally irrelevant when it comes to playing casino games online, but using a credit card will actually cost you more money than most other online casino deposit options. There is also the question of whether it is ever a good idea to gamble with borrowed money, which is in effect what you are doing when you use a credit card even if you settle your account in full every month. The banks would and do argue that their attitude to their customers using a credit card for anything to do with gambling is also based on the same thinking, except in their case they don’t just preach to them they actually penalise them financially as well. Anyone using a credit card as an online casino deposit option will almost certainly find themselves subjected to a surcharge of up to 2% on the transaction because of the bank’s attitude to gambling. If that was not enough of a reason not to choose a credit card as an online casino deposit option, the banks will also treat it as a cash transaction comparable to withdrawing money from an ATM using a credit card and charge interest on the deposit from day one. We all know that when playing casino games online or even in a real casino there is always a house edge built into every game, but deliberately choosing to incur additional costs before even placing a bet does not make a lot of sense if there is another way to achieve the same aim. Every online casino offers a very comprehensive list of deposit options covering almost every way of transferring funds from one place to another, so there are always a number of better alternatives to using a credit card.
Some people may consider a debit card as the most obvious alternative to a credit card and that option certainly resolves the problem of gambling with borrowed money, but unfortunately some debit card holders in Ireland may still be subjected to additional charges because of the way some debit card transactions are handled by the banks. Here at onlinecasino.ie we tend to think that neither a debit card nor a credit card is ever the best choice of online casino deposit option, because the all online casinos offer their customers much better deposit options as a matter of course. Most people who have purchased goods online will have come across payment systems such as Pay Pal or Neteller, both of which are what are we generally referred to as e-wallets. Almost every online casino will accept payments through one or more of the major e-wallets, and there are a number of reasons why e-wallets are one of the best deposit options. The most obvious of these is the increased privacy that using an e-wallet account provides, because the online casino has no access to your personal banking details and your bank will not know what you are using your e-wallet account for. For many of us that sort of privacy is extremely important even if we are not using our e-wallet account for gambling purposes. Setting up an e-wallet account is very easy and there are also a variety of ways to fund it, ranging from bank transfers to debit cards. Once established you can use your e-wallet account to transfer money to an online casino account to fund playing casino games, but you can also use that account for many other internet transactions again adding further protection for your personal financial details. Most of the online casinos featured on our recommended list here at onlinecasino.ie also include a number of pre-loaded cards in their list of acceptable deposit options, which are again a far better option than using either a credit card or a debit card as a deposit option. Pre-loaded cards are rapidly becoming a common way for many of us to look after our holiday money when travelling abroad, particularly if we need to use a foreign currency, but they are also a very secure way to provide the funds we need to play casino games online. Paysafe and Ucash are both pre-loaded cards which are accepted by most online casinos as a deposit option and both offer a perfectly acceptable alternative to using an e-wallet as an online casino deposit option. Some people would even say that a pre-loaded card is a better option because it is easier to keep to a budget when gambling with a set amount of money on a pre-loaded card. The most important element of both the e-wallet and the pre-loaded card is however the increased privacy and security they provide, and the fact that using either of them as an online casino deposit option will not incur additional costs.