It is important to choose the right online casino deposit option

There is no doubt that the internet has made many of our regular chores very much easier, but it has also unfortunately increased the risk of identity theft and fraud. Many of us now regularly do some form of financial transactions online, including shopping, paying our utility bills and even managing our bank accounts online, but although all of these things are much easier to do online we must also be increasingly careful to manage the risks. That is why many of us would automatically reach for a credit card when paying for goods and services online, particularly if we are trading with an internet retailer for the first time. Using a credit card in these circumstances has two obvious advantages. First and foremost using a credit card has a built in insurance element, which means that the banks will usually compensate us if the product or service proves to be unsatisfactory, but there can be an added advantage in using a credit card particularly if you are the victim of fraud because your maximum potential loss is your credit limit rather than the fraudster gaining access to your current account or a savings account. There are however some online financial transactions for which a credit card is not the best option, one of which is making deposits into an online casino account or indeed any online gambling account. All the online casino operators do of course list most major credit cards among their acceptable online casino deposit options, but a credit card is rarely if ever the best choice. The most obvious reason why a credit card is not a good way to fund playing casino games online is that using a credit card for this purpose is effectively gambling with borrowed money, something which is never a good idea. There is however another perhaps even more persuasive reason not to use a credit card as a casino deposit option, and that is that it will cost you money. Rightly or wrongly the banks take a very dim view of any credit card transactions involving gambling, and will almost certainly impose a surcharge of any such transaction, often as much as 2% or more. It is also considered to be a cash transaction in the same way as withdrawing money from an ATM using a credit card, and will therefore be subject to interest charges from day one. Both of these factors will lead to an online casino customer being in a losing situation before even starting to play any casino games, which makes no sense whatsoever because there are so many other more suitable deposit options available. One solution to the problem of gambling with borrowed money would of course be to use a debit card to fund playing casino games online. Almost every online casino features most common debit cards among their list of deposit options and because a debit card is linked to a current account the money has to be available in that account before the payment is approved. In Ireland however using some debit cards may also incur additional charges because of the way debit card transactions are processed. We have no reason to suppose that any of the online casinos on our recommended list have inadequate protection systems with regard to safeguarding their customers’ personal details, but we should point out that using a debit card for any internet transaction does inevitably make your current account details more vulnerable to theft.

So far we have only considered the worst of the online casino deposit options available to us, so let’s have a look at some of the other more acceptable deposit options available to us. The first of these is what is called an e-wallet. The two most common e-wallets listed as acceptable deposit options at most online casinos are Pay Pal and Neteller, both of which can also be used for a variety of other internet transactions. An e-wallet is effectively a separate bank account specifically designed for online payments including shopping, booking holidays or buying theatre tickets among many other potential transactions. The biggest advantage of using an e-wallet account for any of these online transactions, and of course as a way to fund playing casino games is that your primary banking details remain secure and are never available to the internet site operator. There is however another advantage to be had by opting to use an e-wallet account to fund playing online casino games, and that is the privacy it gives you regarding what you are doing with your money. Your bank will only know that you are transferring funds to an e-wallet account, but they will not know what you are using that account for. How you fund an e-wallet account is of course totally up to you, but they are very easy to set up and just as easy to use as any bank account. There is one other deposit option available at most online casinos and that is a pre-loaded card such as Paysafe or Ucash. These cards work in exactly the same way as the pre-loaded currency cards many of us use when we go abroad on holiday. Again it is very easy to transfer money to a pre-loaded card from any form of bank account, and the card can then be used to fund playing casino games online in exactly the same way that you would use a debit card. Clearly it is only possible to deposit money into an online casino account which has actually been loaded onto the card, so this method of funding playing casino games also provides an easy way of controlling your gambling budget. Choosing to use a pre-loaded card as an online casino deposit option also provides the same privacy and personal security that you would expect from using an e-wallet account. There is no doubt that the two best online casino deposit options are the e-wallet or a per-loaded card, both of which are considerably better than a credit card or even a debit card.