Online gambling is extremely popular in Canada, with statistics showing that upwards of 65 percent of the betting age gamblers, (typically 18 or 19 years of age, depending upon province) are expected to place at least one bet at an online casino in the coming year.
That’s a whole lot of gambling, and Canadians consistently are among the top 10 gamblers in the world. As a result, those who want to engage in online gambling in the coming year do need to think carefully about which method of online banking they will use when deciding to play at an online casino.
After all, the safety of your money in a strange business (ie, an online casino) is paramount, both for funding your account and for withdrawal of funds in case you win.
So what are the most popular online casino methods going on in 2022?
Credit Cards
By far the favored method is for the gambler to deposit money into a casino via credit card.
True, not every bank will allow their Visa and Mastercard to be used for your online gambling, and there can be hefty cash advance fees which are spelled out in the terms of service agreement your bank sends you, but Visa and Mastercard are the most widely accepted forms of payment in the online gambling world.
The advantage of using a credit card at an online casino is that funding takes place within minutes and is almost instantaneous.
Banks are increasingly allowing the use of credit cards, (at least with Visa and Mastercard and to an extent, American Express, so it’s quite natural when turning to an online casino to go there first.
And if for some reason your bank blocks direct funding of an online casino, there is usually a workaround.
This workaround is to send money to a digital wallet such as Paypal or Interac which are rarely blocked by banks, and then to transfer the funds to the casino.
While it’s generally cheaper to make a payment directly from a Visa or Mastercard, there are millions of dollars being transferred yearly to digital wallets first, and then used to fund your casino account.
Cryptocurrency Funding
Cryptocurrency funding is the latest wrinkle in online casino banking. In fact, many of you, worried rightly or wrongly about the Canadian government tracking your online casino use, now gamble at casinos that accept only cryptocurrency.
Since cryptocurrency transfers take less than a minute to initiate in most cases and are extremely private, funding your casino account by cryptocurrency is becoming extremely popular.
There are risks of course, which you should be aware of. As cryptocurrencies can be extremely volatile, it’s possible to lose (or theoretically gain) as much as 10 percent of your gambling stake in a single day without ever making a single bet at the casino.
Also, there are advantages and disadvantages to cryptocurrency gambling such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Besides the fact that the cryptocurrency transfers tend to be extremely safe and quick, the other main advantage you will gain is that transaction fees with cryptocurrency tend to be really low, so you can save a lot there compared to other means of funding your account.
At the same time, the major disadvantage, as we have already stated, is that cryptocurrency has been dropping steadily ever since the start of 2022, and so you are in essence double gambling. YOu are betting that your money will stay stable for several days, and you are hoping to win at the casino.
The other disadvantage is that as more and more people get into cryptocurrency as a whole, the system was not built to handle as many transactions are currently being created daily. It is remotely possible that you may need to wait for up to an hour or so for the transfer transaction to the casino to be processed.
Nevertheless, as much as 40 percent of a casino’s funding is now funded through the use of cryptocurrency. Check out here for more information on funding online gambling accounts.
Debit Cards
If you don’t have a credit card, nor deal in cryptocurrency, most people rely on the use of debit cards to fund their gambling accounts.
Almost every online casino is happy to accept funding via debit card, though there is also a fairly high degree of funding declines.
Virtually every bank that declines the use of your credit cards also has the same limitations on debit cards.
If you are trying to fund your gambling account with a debit card you may find that it may take a few days for the funding to be approved, even if you have the money in your account. So debit card funding of your gambling account will definitely tend to be slower.
There is one advantage however to using a debit card for funding your gambling, and that is the fact that you can’t borrow using a debit card. So if you only have $1,000 in your bank account, there will definitely be a $1,000 limit on your spending.
Also, be aware that even if you have $50,000 in your bank account, generally banks limit a single transaction to $1,000 or so per day.
Naturally, as most of you Canadian gamblers have discovered, even if your bank does not allow direct funding of an online casino from your debit card, sending the money first to an e-wallet is an easy workaround.
E-wallets
We’ve already covered e-wallets as a workaround to get around banking restrictions, but there is another good reason to fund gambling accounts with an E-wallet, and that reason is receiving payments.
Some casinos have a ton of ways to start an account but, but limit withdrawal avenues.
This is primarily because, in many countries, online gambling is a quasi-legal activity at best. So if you win a small jackpot of $5,000 or so, it’s often best if the casino sends the money to your Paypal or other E-wallet, and then you retrieve it from there.
Wire Transfer
The last method is the old standby, which is wire transfer. Of course, they are costly as compared to other methods of funding an account and they take a few days to fully get there and be credited, but wire transfers work as a last resort.