It has never been a better time to run your life completely online, you can get social with chat apps, do your grocery shopping, learn a new skill, or complete an entire degree program and do a day’s work, all without leaving the house.
This would not be possible without the proliferation of digital payment options which mean you can make payments (and receive them) immediately from wherever you are in the world; something that even 20 years ago would have been extremely complicated.
Digital payments options are being offered everywhere, including on the high street, and this includes places where you might go for some entertainment. Casinos, both physical and online, are expanding to offer players different ways to fund their games, but there are online casino sites you can play on without wagering, too.
Let’s look at some of the ways that you can pay to play at a casino.
Cash
Cash has long been king, and the only way that players could get involved in the casino scene back in the day. While you cannot use cash in an online casino, of course, you can still visit a physical casino and exchange your cash for chips that can be used in games or in machines.
At the end of your visit, you just need to exchange your chips back for cash to take your winnings home.
Credit and Debit Cards
It was in the 1970s that credit cards became more prevalent, and in physical casinos they soon became a way for players to fund their nights out. However, credit card companies cracked down quite quickly on this as it was a popular vehicle for fraud.
Today, you can use a debit cards (and some credit cards) to put money into your online casino account so that you can play.
Bank Transfer
Working in a similar way to the card option above, a bank transfer is usually a fast and safe way of getting money into an online casino account. You would usually do the transfer from the casino site, but sometimes you might need to do it using online banking.
It is worth noting, however, that some bank accounts will not allow access to casino sites – so definitely check if this is something that you are considering.
eWallets
eWallets are essentially an online holding service for funds. There are many options available for this, such as Neteller and Skrill, but the most used is definitely PayPal.
Users who have a PayPal account can send and receive money using only an email address. In this way, it is a layer of protection between the other person or company and your personal financial details, acting as a third party that manages the transaction.
You can set up your PayPal to have access to your debit card and to your bank account, and you can choose whether to hold money in your PayPal balance. This means that your winnings would be withdrawn to your PayPal account, and you an choose where they end up after that.
PayPal is becoming widely accepted in online casinos, and in some cases, you can even buy chips in a physical casino with it, too.
For many players, PayPal offers a safe and convenient service that helps protect your finances.
Crypto
Unless you have been living under a rock, you will have heard about cryptocurrency. For those unsure, cryptocurrency is a digital currency that is decentralized – which means that it is not controlled by any government or institution, and its value is not usually tied to a commodity like gold. Proponents of crypto herald it as a new way to do business, removing geographical and political borders from transactions, and making it almost anonymous.
Crypto is problematic for many because of the decentralised nature of it – a lack of control from financial institutions might bring freedoms, but there are also pitfalls which include the potential for criminal activity, a value of coin that can plummet based on a news story, and the sheer cost in ‘producing’ some of the coins available.
Online casinos are starting to look into offering crypto as a digital payment method, but there are very few regulated and licensed sites that allow it at this time, which means that if you want to use this to fund your account you might have to risk an unregulated site, which could cause you financial harm in the long term.
With so many other digital payment options available, some people will fall back on the more familiar and reliable debit and credit card transactions, while others will want to make the most of the separation of personal financial information that comes from eWallets. Whichever you choose, make sure that you are using an online casino that protects your personal information and is regulated and licensed.