Take care when choosing which online casino deposit option to use

Playing casino games at an online casino is clearly becoming more and more popular here in Ireland, but we must always remember that opening an online casino account and paying money into that account needs just as much care and attention as any other internet financial transaction. We are gradually becoming more aware of the risks associated with using the internet for online shopping or indeed any other form of financial transaction, but we are still vulnerable to hacking and fraud if we drop our guard. One of the most obvious risks associated with internet shopping is of course failing to spot a fake site, or buying from a site which is selling shoddy goods or imitation designer labelled products, either of which will undoubtedly make you angry and may compromise your personal data. At least when it comes to choosing a suitable online casino site where you can enjoy playing casino games without worrying about whether you are being ripped off, we here at onlinecasino.ie can try to help. Our regular online casino reviews for instance, which include examining the financial management systems they have in place help us compile our list of recommended online casino sites all of which we believe will provide our readers with a safe and secure place to enjoy their casino games. There is however one more potential pitfall associated with funding an online casino account, and that lies in not choosing the best of the available online casino deposit options. The wrong choice could unnecessarily cost you a significant amount of money in extra charges. All the online casinos on our recommended list offer their customers a wide range of deposit options designed to satisfy everybody’s preferences, but one of these options in particular can cost you more than you bargained for. Many of us have rightly become accustomed to reaching for a credit card whenever we are paying for something online because of the built in insurance element should the product or service prove unsatisfactory, but we can hardly expect the credit card issuers to reimburse us if we lose money playing casino games online so the main reason why we use a credit card for online shopping is invalid when it comes to funding an online casino account. It is also true that using a credit card to fund playing casino games is effectively gambling with borrowed money, even if you intend to clear the account in full at the end of every month. Not only that but choosing to use a credit card to fund an online casino account will actually cost you money because the banks do not like their credit cards to be used for anything involving gambling and will therefore apply a surcharge on any transaction which in their opinion involves gambling. That surcharge can often be as much as 2% of the sum involved, which means that anyone using a credit card to fund playing online casino games will effectively be losing 2% of their stake money before they have even started playing. There are also other additional costs involved with using a credit card as an online casino deposit option, because it will be classified as a cash transaction in the same way as withdrawing money from an ATM using a credit card and will therefore incur interest charges from day one at credit card rates. Bearing in mind that when playing casino games at an online casino or any real casino for that matter, there is always a house edge to contend with so choosing to incur even more losses before placing a single bet makes very little sense.

We should also point out that some debit cards commonly in use in Ireland may also be subject to additional charges because of the way they are processed, so we recommend that our readers look carefully at the alternatives. Undoubtedly the most secure and cost effective way to fund an online casino account is to use cash, and both of the major bookmakers operating betting shops in Ireland allow their customers to manage their online casino accounts using cash over the counter in their shops. Both Paddy Power and Ladbrokes offer this deposit option to customers of their online casinos, and both have also been featured on our recommended list for many years and offer an excellent range of casino games. As our use of the internet has increased a number of different ways of carrying out online financial transactions have been developed, one of which is what is generally called an e-wallet. You may not have heard that term, but you will almost certainly recognise the name PayPal which is of course probably the best known e-wallet account. An e-wallet is a separate bank account which can be used for almost any internet transaction, including funding an online casino account. All the online casinos featured on our recommended list offer at least one e-wallet amongst their acceptable deposit options, and it is undoubtedly one of the best ways to fund playing casino games online. Not only are there no additional charges associated with using an e-wallet account to fund playing casino games, but both your privacy and your personal data security are greatly improved by using this deposit option. Your bank for instance will not know what you are using the e-wallet account for and nor will the online casino operator have access to your primary banking details. How you choose to fund your e-wallet account is clearly up to you but there is no doubt that an e-wallet is one of the best online casino deposit options. There is one more online casino option which is offered by most of the online casinos, and that is a pre-paid card such as Paysafe or Ucash. Both of these cards operate in the same way as the pre-loaded currency cards many of us use to manage our holiday money when we travel abroad, and also offer the same degree of privacy and security as using an e-wallet account.