A whooooole lot of people I know who gamble use PayPal in order to deal with their transactions. And why wouldn’t they? PayPal is fast, secure, easy to use and incredibly convenient, especially when it comes to casino-related money back and forth. The overwhelming majority of online casinos in the world support PayPal, meaning that even without linking as much as a credit card you can withdraw winnings online and use the money to purchase stuff or to have them directly deposited into your bank account without the casino knowing a number of it, which is great if you’ve got any kind of security concerns (I know I want as few strangers on the Internet knowing my bank account number as possible, the only exception being a certain Nigerian prince who promised to store some of his fortune there). And the best part is that PayPal offers protection for your investment. Say, you decide to deposit a tenner into your online casino of choice, and then suddenly you realize that your account is still empty, and the casino is being very uncooperative despite the fact that they still billed you. Have no fear, PayPal will refund you! … Or at least they would have.

Change is coming to the platform, folks, and none of it’s good. According to recent amendments to PayPal’s policies, the company will no longer offer protection on several services. Some are understandable, such as donations done to projects listed on crowdfunding sites like “Kickstarter”. That makes sense – with so many projects failing to deliver, PayPal would go bankrupt if they refunded each one forever. Others are just plain weird, like payments done to government organizations. I’m not entirely sure I understand this one, but it doesn’t really matter. The worst part for us gamblers is that PayPal will no longer offer protection for payments done on sites dealing with “gambling, gaming and/or any other activity with an entry fee and a prize”, which… Sucks. It’s not hard to understand why they had to do it – I’m guessing that plenty of sore losers decided to try and take their money back after not enjoying a casino experience. But it’s pretty dumb that the rest of us honest gamblers need to suffer because of it as well.

It’s important to note that the changes aren’t worldwide – they’re only applicable to several countries, such as the US, Canada and Brazil (where they’ll take effect on June 25th), but it’s not hard to imagine that pretty soon the rest of the world will follow, especially when it comes to countries where gambling is a big thing. In my estimation, by the end of the year Germany, Spain, the UK and other big EU markets will also have one less reason to recommend PayPal, but that’s just me, so don’t quote me on it. Here’s hoping for the best!