Think twice about which of the online casino deposit options you choose

Almost every day we read of another well-known high street retailer in trouble, and it is usually blamed on our move towards buying more and more products and services online. Even the banks are using the increasing popularity of online banking as a reason to move away from the high street, but that brings us to another inevitable result of our increased use of the internet for everything we need in our daily lives, and that is the demise of cash as a method of payment. Here at onlinecasino.ie we are of course primarily interested in the increasing popularity of playing casino games at an online casino, but as with any other online activity there is the question of how to fund playing our favourite online casino games. As you would expect every online casino offers a comprehensive range of deposit options designed to ensure that every potential online casino games player can find a method of funding playing those games in a way that suits their individual circumstances. Many of the reasons why playing casino games online has become such a popular leisure activity are the same as those which have driven the success of online retailing, but when it comes to depositing money into an online casino account there can be significant differences in what is best practice. Before the introduction of online gambling sites most people would probably have used cash to fund their gambling activities, whether at their local betting shop, their bingo club or playing the slot machines, but for many of us using cash to fund playing casino games online or even sports gambling online is not an option. At this stage we should point out that in Ireland our two biggest high street bookmakers, Paddy Power and Ladbrokes do allow their online customers to manage their accounts using cash through their betting shops, so that for example if you choose to play your casino games at the Paddy Power online casino site you can fund playing those games in cash at a high street Paddy Power shop. Clearly from a security point of view using cash is always going to be the safest of all the deposit options, but of course you need to have easy access to a betting shop and be happy that you can only manage your account in this way during normal opening hours. As for the other common online casino deposit options, the one we need to look at most critically is the use of a credit card because for many reasons it is rarely if ever the best choice.

Every online casino includes one or more of the major credit cards among their acceptable deposit options, but using a credit card to fund playing casino games is not the same as buying your groceries online from a supermarket. Unfortunately many of us have become accustomed to using a credit card for all our internet purchases because of the insurance offered by the card issuers if the product or service is unsatisfactory, but that reasoning does not apply to gambling online. The first thing we need to consider when discussing using a credit card to fund an online casino account is that it is effectively gambling with borrowed money even if you religiously pay off the whole balance every month. There is however another more practical reason why using a credit card to fund playing online casino games is not the best option, and that is the fact that you will undoubtedly be charged extra by the banks. Any credit card transaction involving gambling immediately triggers a surcharge which is usually at least 2% of the total transaction and could be more. Every online casino games player already faces a house edge on every game they play but voluntarily accepting a further 2% hit before you have even placed a bet does not make much sense. While we are talking about using plastic to fund our online casino account we should also point out that some banks, particularly in Ireland may also charge for using a debit card even though you need to have the money in your account for the transaction to be processed.

The most obvious alternative to using either a credit or a debit card is of course an e-wallet. The increasing popularity of shopping online and of course gambling online has led to the introduction of the e-wallet as an alternative method of payment. Pay Pal and Neteller are just two e-wallet providers which are accepted at most online casinos, and Pay Pal in particular is now accepted by almost every other type of internet site as a method of payment. An e-wallet is a totally separate bank account which is easy to open and can be used for a whole range of different internet transactions including of course transferring money to an online casino account. The main advantages of using an e-wallet as an online casino deposit option are that the online casino operator does not have access to your personal banking details, and nor does your bank know what you are using the account for so you also have far greater privacy than funding you online casino account direct from one of your main bank accounts. Before we close our discussions regarding the commonly acceptable online casino deposit options, there is another safe and secure option we need to consider and that is the pre-loaded cash card. Many of us now use a pre-loaded foreign currency card when we travel abroad on holiday or on business, and the pre-loaded cash cards listed among most list of online casino deposit options work in exactly the same way. Ucash and PaySafe are the two most common pre-loaded cash cards you will find among the acceptable deposit options listed by most online casinos, and using one of these cards to fund playing casino games clearly has the same level of security and privacy as an e-wallet. Both of these deposit options also help to manage a gambling budget because you have to make a conscious decision to load more money and are therefore hopefully less likely to chase losses.