E-wallet services became extremely popular in the last few years, with sites like Payoneer, Neteller and Skrill offering to manage your online transactions for you and hold onto your money, for a small fee per transaction. If you’re wondering exactly what made all of them start popping up so suddenly and for seemingly no reason, well, the answer is PayPal. People today are so used to making money transactions online that they forget that only a few days ago, the general consensus was that when you put your credit card information online it’s bound to get stolen, and that was that. eBay, which had ambition to become one of the biggest online marketplaces, ran into this problem early on – people were reluctant to buy anything from the site because they didn’t want to get ripped off! That’s why the creators of eBay came up with PayPal as a solution, which offered to store your money and bank information and essentially be the middle-man for all online transactions in order to minimize the risk of your data leaking out. And in case a transaction went wrong, PayPal was going to reimburse every penny! Their plan worked like a charm, and today PayPal is by far the biggest e-wallet service out there, with almost every big business and the overwhelming majority of smaller Internet-based shops and business-minded individuals. Considering its immense popularity, you might want to consider using it for your transactions, but should you? Let’s find out!
Pro: Lots of Casinos Support PayPal
By far the biggest draw of PayPal is that it’s supported by pretty much every single big online casino out there. 888, LadBrokes, Betfair, EuroGrand and many other big names are perfectly okay with accepting deposits through PayPal, and while some are a bit iffy on allowing withdrawals through PayPal (mostly due to legal reasons – casinos are not authorized to pay out to people in countries where online gambling is illegal, and having a bank account in a country where gambling is legal is the easiest way to prove that things are A-OK) most, like Ladbrokes and Betfair, are perfectly fine with withdrawals too. There’s plenty of sites out there that show you exactly which casinos support PayPal, but my favorite is definitely www.ponlinecasinos.co.uk, so definitely feel free to check that one out if you’d like to learn more.
Pro: It’s Convenient
Many online casinos refuse to store any credit card information on their servers because of security concerns. If they did store them, and they got hacked, that meant that the hackers would have access to hundreds of credit card numbers that they could later sell or use for their own personal gain. The bottom line is that you pretty much need to input your credit card information, as well as stuff like name, address and a dozen other details every single time you want to make a deposit to an online casino. PayPal, on the other hand, has been specifically designed to be unhackable (I mean, can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if those millions of credit cards and bank details leaked? It would bury the company for sure), meaning that you can safely store your information there and deposit with just two clicks.
Con: Sometimes It Won’t Insure You When Playing Casino
Typically, if you do a business transaction and the other party doesn’t deliver, PayPal will happily reimburse you. This was generally done to combat the wave of scummy eBay sellers who took people’s money and then never shipped their items, but has been extremely convenient for many other uses, too. Generally, it provides a very nice sense of security to the consumer, assuring them that no matter what happens, they’re in safe hands. Unfortunately, following recent changes, in some countries (such as the US, Canada and Brazil), the “if the seller messes up we’ll give you your cash back” rule has stopped applying to online casinos, and online gambling in general. That means that, if you live in those territories, happen to deposit in a casino and then get no money to play with due to some technical error, it’ll be up to the online casino support to resolve your issue, since PayPal won’t do a thing about it. Keep in mind that this only applies to a small number of territories, with some of the biggest casino markets (like the UK and Germany) not being affected at all. It’s a relatively small con, all things considered, but it’s something to consider.