There are many different online casino deposit options

There are very few hobbies or leisure pastimes which are free of charge and although it is possible to play some casino games at an online casino in the free play mode for a short while, it really isn’t as much fun as playing for money. We therefore have to make a decision as to how we are going to transfer money into our online casino account so that we can enjoy playing the games for real. Every online casino clearly offers a very wide range of deposit options for their customers so that they have plenty of choice and are free to choose the one that suits them best, but it is not a decision to be taken lightly because some of those options can prove to be very expensive. The danger is that we simply pick up our credit card to deposit money into our online casino account as we probably would for almost every other type of internet transaction. Unfortunately the very good reasons such as built-in insurance element offered by the card issuer which persuade us to use a credit card for online purchases are not relevant when it comes to funding the playing of online casino games. Unfortunately you cannot insure against losing when playing casino games, but if you use a credit card to fund playing those games you will also fall foul of the additional surcharges the banks’ will apply when you use a credit card for anything to do with gambling. We are not going to comment on the rights and wrongs of these charges, although clearly we would never recommend gambling with borrowed money, but we think it is important that our readers are aware of that using a credit card as a deposit option will incur an additional charge which can be at least 2% of the transaction sum and may be even more. We should also point out that for Irish online casino games players some debit cards may also incur those charges because of the way the transactions are processed. In principle there is nothing wrong with using a debit card as an online casino deposit option and some debit cards will not incur additional charges, but it is wise to check. Having established that both credit cards and debit cards can lead to additional unnecessary costs let’s have a look at the other deposit options available at most online casinos.

Quite apart from the additional expenditure associated with using the most common forms of plastic, we should also consider our privacy and the security of our personal financial data when deciding which of the alternative online casino deposit options to use. Almost every online casino lists one or more e-wallet accounts as an acceptable way to transfer money into an online casino account, so what are the benefits of opening an e-wallet account to use as a deposit option. The most obvious benefits are firstly the increased privacy associated with an e-wallet account, and then the much improved security when it comes to our personal banking details. From the privacy point of view your bank will of course know that you have an e-wallet account because you are probably transferring money into it from your current account, but they will have no idea what you are using that account for. An e-wallet such as Pay Pal or Neteller can be used to a wide variety of internet purchases as well as depositing money into an online casino account so there is very little chance that your bank will ever know that you are playing casino games online. The fact that an e-wallet account is a completely separate account from your personal current account also means that the online casino operator has no access to your main banking details, significantly increasing your personal data security. There is no doubt that using an e-wallet account to transfer money into your online casino account is far better than using either a credit card or a debit card, both from a cost point of view and from a privacy and security point of view.

That is not however the limit of our online casino deposit options. Most online casinos also list one or more pre-loaded cards as acceptable deposit options, so what are the advantages associated with this way of depositing money into an online casino account. Perhaps we should first explain how a pre-loaded card works. The two most common pre-loaded cards accepted by many online casinos are the Ucash card and the PaySafe card. Both of these cards operate in the same way as the pre-loaded currency cards many of us use when we go on holiday abroad. You simply transfer the sum of money you wish to spend onto the card and then use it in the same way as you would use a credit or debit card. Many of the advantages of using a pre-loaded card as an online casino deposit option are similar to those associated with using an e-wallet account. Again it is an entirely separate account and therefore provides the increased privacy and security of using an e-wallet account, and it also means that you cannot gamble more than you have put onto the card. This is a very important aspect of using a pre-loaded card as an online casino deposit option because it is an excellent way to control your gambling budget. We all know that it is possible to have a run of bad luck when playing online casino games, and we also know that it is very tempting to begin to chase our losses by gambling more and more money in the hope that our luck will change. However if you have chosen to use a pre-loaded card as your only way of transferring money into your account it is far more difficult to exceed your budget, and hopefully give you the opportunity to have second thoughts if you are tempted to keep playing. For all these reasons choosing the right online casino deposit option is an important decision.