3 Myths About Banking Options and Payments

You might think that you have online casinos all figured out, but there are a few misconceptions that you might have, ones that could be costing you a lot of time and money. So, take a look at these myths about banking options on casinos and sports books to find out how things really work.

 

1. Verification Checks are Needed on all Withdrawals

Some casinos will require you to undertake such checks, but they are not necessary and in most cases they can be done by the casino automatically. There are soft credit checks that can be run to determine if you are who you say you are and if that’s the case then you should not be required to supply a proof of ID and address.

Make sure you input your full name and address properly and register with the electoral roll. That way you shouldn’t have any issues with these checks, unless you encounter a very fastidious casino that is.

2. Payments Take Days to Process

Casinos want you to think that there is a long wait for everything and that this is beyond their control, but in most cases they are the ones stalling things.

Take web wallets for example. All transactions are instant. You know this yourself if you have ever sent money or been paid for an item on eBay. It’s not different with these gambling sites, except they usually sit on your withdrawal request for hours or even days.

With credit cards and debit cards it should take 2 days on average, but casinos stall these even more than web wallets and often sit on them for 3 days, which is where the 5 day average comes in.

3. Credit Cards are a Great Way to Gamble

Credit cards actually land you with a host of fees. You will be charged a “Cash Transaction” fee for using a credit card on a gambling site. In the UK this is £2.50 with most providers, even if you only deposited £10. If you deposit more you will pay more (albeit not exponentially, as £50 to £100 usually incurs fees of £4 to £8). You will also be charged interest on these transactions, even if you pay off your credit card every month.

On top of this you may be charged by the site to make the transaction and you may even lose your credit card, as many providers frown upon customers using credit to gamble and have added such terms to their Ts&Cs.

Casinos like to focus on the monetary amount and ignore all others. They will tell you that they are offering a bonus of £1,000, and then put everything else in the small print.

With bonuses like this you have to factor in two parameters. The first is the percentage. For instance a matched deposit bonus of 25% offering up to £1,000 is not as good as a 200% offering up to £500. On the first you will need to deposit £4,000 to get £1,000 free; on the second you just need £250 to get a free £500.

The second thing to take into account is the play-through rate, which is the amount of times you need to risk your bonus in order to withdraw it. The average is 30x, but some are as high as 100x and beyond.

No Deposit Bonus

With these bonuses you get the money upfront no deposit required. However, while sites like SkyBet have paid out to people who sign-up with a valid name and address, others require you to go through ID checks and to input credit card details.

The play-through rate also comes into it as some of them will require you to risk that bonus hundreds of times, which basically means you need to be winning hundreds from a £10 bonus in order to actually get any money out of them.

Free Spins

The main issue with this bonus is the value of the spin. 1 free spin of £1 is worth more than 50 free spins of £0.01, yet most players only focus on the amount and not the value. In fact, most sites will not show you the value and you will have to dig through the terms and conditions to find it.

This is well worth doing though because no two free spin bonuses are alike.