How to Choose the Most Suitable Payment Method at an Online Casino
Most top casinos offer a dozen or so ways to deposit cash. You should encounter minimal issues when depositing funds into an online casino, but nonetheless, you still want to find the most convenient method that matches your preferences.
We’re going to be honest here: there’s not a vast difference between payment methods, and it boils down to personal preference. All of the top payment methods that casino platforms use go through stringent verification and security checks. If they weren’t suitable or had any standout issues, they wouldn’t be working in conjunction with some of the top gambling companies on the internet.
However, even if you weigh up all of these and find that there’s not much difference, one will trump the others in terms of suitability, so let’s take a look at some of the factors that are in play when deciding the most suitable payment method for your casino gaming.
Visa, Mastercard and PayPal
We’ve decided to group these as the three most popular payment methods in casino gaming. However, PayPal has distinct differences relative to Visa and Mastercard, which share many similarities. Other than slight differences in the benefits you can get from using each card, they work identically.
Mastercard payments
When online casinos first launched in the late 20th century, Mastercard was one of the earliest adopted ways for casino gamers to deposit and withdraw their funds online.
Few digital casinos operated back then, as fewer people had access to internet connections or owned appropriate devices to gamble online. However, for those who got on board with this new way to play casino games, the good old 16-digit card number facilitated their transactions, quickly and easily. While this initially started as a few dozen casinos, there are now thousands of casinos that accept Mastercard. Millions of people prefer to use Mastercard as they have many employees worldwide and can be contacted 24 hours a day.
They can quickly open a case file if you have any issues with your deposit or withdrawal, and have the means to resolve any issues quickly. While the likelihood of this is slim, other payment systems that are smaller and don’t have the sort of visibility that Mastercard does could take a bit longer to resolve a similar incident.
Depositing via Visa
Both Mastercard and Visa benefit from low fees and highly secure networks. Both systems also incorporate the most sophisticated levels of technology and security, so if you value security above everything else, you can’t really go wrong with either Mastercard or Visa. Very little separates both systems; you use your card number, expiry date and CVV to deposit, and if you’re lucky with your bet, you’ll receive it back via the same details.
PayPal casinos
As one of the titans of global finance and a champion of the fintech boom, PayPal boasts a customer base exceeding 200 million people in over 100 different countries. Due to this deep and expansive base in several countries, PayPal’s success has helped it become one of the main routes for people looking to play online casino games.
PayPal’s influence and research extend far beyond casino gaming. It is one of the most used services for those looking to buy a range of goods and services online. Although it was the first of the electronic wallets and payment systems to emerge in the early days of the internet, the company continues to expand and is optimistic about its future growth.
One of the many reasons casino gamers will opt for PayPal over other payment options is because of its extra layer of security. You can sync your bank account or card with PayPal, and then you can deposit and withdraw to a casino simply using your verified PayPal email. This means that in the unlikely event that a casino is subject to a breach, a hacker can’t access your bank account information or credit card details, as you’re only using email to verify your payment.
Alternate payment systems
Once we look beneath the tip of the iceberg, there’s a whole host of alternative payment methods seeking to challenge these traditional titans of digital finance. Apple Pay and Google Pay are the two most promising companies continuing to make ground. Within the next decade, they may surpass the likes of Visa and Mastercard as the primary payment method that gamblers use.
Similar to PayPal, both of these electronic wallets sync to your phone, and you deposit and withdraw your funds via your phone wallet. This adds a layer of convenience as you do not need to scramble around looking for a physical card to enter the details in manually – simply sync your phone wallet and deposit.
Neteller and other niche payment systems such as Trustly and Skrill operate on a similar dynamic. Still, depending on the casino you use, you may have to pay some fees for your deposits and withdrawals, so ensure you always perform due diligence and research them thoroughly.
Cryptocurrency casinos are also gaining some traction. By utilizing the blockchain, crypto casinos can verify all deposits and withdrawals. By using this publicly accessible ledger in real time, crypto payments are becoming the payment method of choice for thousands of bettors. Although this initially started with Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two main cryptocurrencies, gamblers now use a range of altcoins to play, ranging from USDT to Ripple’s XRP.
Main factors to consider
Ultimately, you want to settle on a payment method that is the most convenient for you. It’s also crucial not to sacrifice security for convenience. Any security issues will almost exclusively stem from the providers themselves, whether their site is compromised or a hacker can access their database and expose financially sensitive information.
Fees and hidden costs are also a factor, but it’s rare to find a payment provider in casino gaming that will levy charges – it’s these sorts of hidden costs that will drive customers to their competition, so it’s counterproductive. As long as you tick off the boxes for convenience, security and low fees, you can settle on the payment provider best suited to your gambling preferences.
Conclusion
There’s a variety of payment method choices in casino gaming, and the industry has expanded tenfold from its initial beginnings. With such a plethora of avenues on the table, suitability stems from convenience, as it does in many other aspects of our lives.
In many ways, we don’t need to view a payment at an online casino any differently from other digital services and transactions. It’s all about using the payment method that best suits us. Sure, there might be a few nuances and slightly different elements between traditional payment methods like Mastercard and newer digital wallets like Apple Pay, but you’ll only discover these once you try them.
All of the options we have discussed today are suitable, really – while some might be more suited to mobile betting, you’re not going to have any issues. Once you boil it down, it’s all about your preferences, suitability mostly plays second fiddle, being just one piece of the wider puzzle.
