Most online casinos offer a wide variety of ways for players to put money into their accounts. That often makes users look at some possibilities they wouldn’t normally consider, like prepaid cards and e-wallet sites. But for many players, there may be a more familiar way to deposit money into their online casino account: using one of the credit cards they already have sitting right in their wallets.
Credit cards are a very popular way to deposit money at online casinos, and the reasons are obvious. Most people have a credit card (or a debit card that can be used in a similar fashion), and they make transactions simple and fast, usually crediting your account with your deposit instantaneously. While credit cards may not be the best solution for every person in every situation, they are definitely a viable way to quickly deposit funds into an account.
Can I Use My Credit Cards at Online Casinos?
Yes, credit cards are an excellent way to start playing at online casino sites! Pretty much every single online gambling site around allows deposits through credit cards, though the specifics of what they expect and which cards will work there vary from site to site.
That being said, there’s no guarantee that a particular credit card will work at a given online casino. We’ll get into the reasons for this more in the section below, but as you try to use your credit card at Internet casinos, you might find that it gets rejected at some sites.
If you really want to use your credit card to play online casino games, it is important to remember that acceptance and rejection can be really inconsistent across the industry. A card may not work at one casino, but be accepted many other sites. Similarly, while one card may not go through at a casino, even other cards from the same brand may be accepted without a hitch. When it comes to credit cards, you may sometimes need to do a little experimentation to figure out what works and where.
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Credit Card Brands and Casino Use
One thing you will quickly discover when it comes to using credit cards at online casinos is that not all cards are created equally. The brand of card that you use will impact how widely it can be used, and even more important may be the bank that issued that card.
As far as branded cards go, Visa tends to have the widest acceptance among online casino sites, with MasterCard a very close second. This shouldn’t be a surprise: these two brands are the most widely used around the world, and so online casinos very much want to take them if they can.
Of these two brands, Visa cards appear to have the better chance of being approved when used for online gambling, but this will vary tremendously from card to card. The problem here is that Visa and MasterCard-branded credit cards are issued by tens of thousands of different banks and financial institutions worldwide, and it is those banks that set the policy on how they can be used. Some allow their cards to be used for online gambling, while others do not. Some are very good at coding what is allowed and what is not, while others are lax. Take all of those elements together, and you have a situation where anything can happen each time you try to use your card to make a deposit.
Less commonly accepted than those two brands is American Express. You will find a fair number of online casinos saying that they will take AMEX cards, but it is a much lower number than for Visa or MasterCard. Worse still, the acceptance rate for gambling transactions is also lower when using American Express.
This is largely due to the fact that AMEX uses a much more centralized policy for their cards, as they directly issue many of their credit cards (though some are issued through banks as well). That policy isn’t particularly friendly to the gambling industry, meaning that while these cards may sometimes go through at online casinos, they aren’t a particularly reliable option. However, many sites do still take AMEX cards.
Other cards may also sometimes be seen among the deposit options at Internet casinos, but are relatively uncommon. If you play at a site that offers deposits via Discover, Diner’s Club, or another card, and you’d like to use that option, it is certainly worth a try; however, as with any other brand, there is no guarantee that your card will be accepted.
Using Credit Cards at Online Casinos in the USA
Americans are likely to have particularly low approval rates when trying to use credit cards online. Because of federal laws, banks are not supposed to process online gambling transactions, which means that financial institutions attempt to control the use of their cards at online casinos in the USA. That doesn’t mean that this is always effective, however, and many people in the United States regularly use credit cards and debit cards at Internet casinos.
Still, it’s clear that the numbers aren’t promising, as even in regulated US markets, it has proven difficult to get banks to ensure their cards can be used on licensed gambling sites. In New Jersey, casinos were finding that only about 60 percent of Visa transactions and 80 percent of MasterCard transactions were being processed as of summer 2015, despite efforts to get more banks to accept the payments at fully legal, regulated sites.
But despite those numbers, there is no downside to trying to use a credit card to make a deposit if that is your preferred method of payment. The worst thing that can happen is that your transaction is declined, which costs you nothing; if it works, then you’ll be all set to play! If you want to use your credit card to make an online casino deposit, we suggest trying one of our recommended sites, all of which are reliable and accept at least some major credit cards.
