PayPal Betting Sites & Online Casinos

Paypal is probably one of the most well-known, trustworthy payment systems across the globe, which can be used to make deposits, transfers, and withdrawals. The company has been around since 1999 and has over 70 million account holders. By using Paypal, you cut out the middleman and never have to give a casino or bookmaker any of your bank details, as all of your payment information is safely stored in the famous online payments system.

Paypal has a top notch customer service team, so if you have any problems, you can call them or email them and they'll aim to get back to you within 24 hours. The system is easy to use and it also tracks your purchases so you can keep an eye on how much you're spending.

Online Gambling Sites That Accept PayPal

How it Works

PayPal is essentially an e-wallet that allows you to deposit and withdraw money into a virtual bank account. The process is very simple in that you deposit money from your bank account into your PayPal account and then use your PayPal details to transfer money to and from online betting sites.

The first step would be to create a PayPal account using your personal details. Then you would need to attach a bank account to that PayPal account. You can add as many bank accounts or credit cards to PayPal as you wish and then at the point of transaction you can choose which payment method to take your money from.

The flexibility of a PayPal account will allow you either pay for goods or services with money that is already in your account or if your PayPal balance is zero, then the transaction will work through any bank or card that is connected to the account.

PayPal will be an ideal alternative for punters who have trouble depositing with certain bookmakers or gambling sites. As you will likely be aware, the gambling laws within each country can vary massively, with the UK for example being very lenient allowing deposits from dozens of different banking methods, but the US incorporating much stricter laws making depositing or withdrawing funds to legal outlets quite a burden.

Using PayPal for online gambling

There is a lot of miss-information kicking around the web about using PayPal at online gambling sites - usually stating that either PayPal cannot be used for online gambling purposes, or that anyone can use it.

The reality is somewhere in the middle - PayPal can be used for online gambling, but only when certain criteria are met. The first is that you reside in a country where online gambling is regulated (you can see a list of countries that can use PayPal for gambling purposes at the bottom of the page) - this means that USA players can't use PayPal for gambling transactions, but UK players can.

The second is that the merchant (eg: the online casino or poker site) is located and regulated in a jurisdiction where online gambling is legal - for example, the United Kingdom.

These criteria are defined in clause 6 of PayPals acceptable use policy found here, specifically this section: "...unless the operator has obtained prior approval from PayPal and the operator and customers are located exclusively in jurisdictions where such activities are permitted by law".

If you are lucky enough to live in a country that regulates online gambling, you can find lists of gambling sites that accept PayPal at any of the gambling sites listed above.

At time of writing, only the following countries can use PayPal for online gambling purposes - additional countries may be added as and when that countries formally regulates online gambling:

  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Denmark
  • Finland
  • France
  • Greece
  • Ireland
  • Italy
  • Portugal
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • United Kingdom

Benefits of using PayPal

The biggest benefit for using PayPal for online gambling has to be the transaction times involved. Deposits with most bookmakers and payment methods will be pretty much instant. The time it takes to withdraw funds from bookmakers has always been a frustrating period for the punter, taking anywhere between 2 to 14 working days.

Because of the ease of PayPal and the fact that it’s an e-wallet, transactions or specifically withdrawals can take just a matter of hours to process and be in your account. On top of that, PayPal itself usually process withdrawals from your PayPal account back to your bank instantly and at most 2 hours. The luxury of having your cash sitting in your bank account the same day from your bookmaker is something that will appeal to a vast majority of punters and removes the usual frustration involved with the time it takes for bookmakers and banks to acknowledge withdrawals.

When using PayPal you add an extra layer of security to your banking options. It removes the need to store vital information about your bank account on betting websites and whilst the majority of sites will have the highest layer of security, you are always taking a risk when you leave bank details. Using PayPal means that there are no records held with the bookmaker whatsoever and not only will they need to get access to your bookmaker log in, but they will also need to get access to your PayPal log in to gain funds.

Top Tip - Use separate password for bookmaker and PayPal log in

Disadvantages

There are actually very few disadvantages to speak of with using PayPal but if we had to highlight one it would be the potential fees involved. The bookmaker may charge you to deposit and even withdraw using PayPal. These are very much at the discrepancy of the bookmaker and not all will follow suit. It’s worth noting that PayPal will not charge you any fees for using it with gambling sites, but may charge you a currency conversion fee should the default currency on the bookmaker and the PayPal account not match.

About

PayPal has been about since 1998 and was the brainchild of a team of design students from the university of Illinois. They are based out of California, US and employ over 15,000 worldwide. In 2015 they reported profits over $1.22 billion, making them the biggest e-wallet in the world.

The company shot to fame in 2002 when retail giants eBay.com partnered PayPal and used them as their main payment source for their website. This gave PayPal massive publicity and as such, was seen as one of the driving forces behind the success of eBay.

The company actually stopped allowing gambling transactions in 2006 when a bill in the US forced out a lot of punters from being able to deposit and withdraw their funds. Many lawsuits followed over the coming years, but it’s fair to say that PayPal, within the gabling sector at least, took a back seat.

2009 is widely considered as the companies rival within online gambling and from here they once again opened their doors to online betting sites and casinos. Betfair were the first to welcome PayPal before other leading companies such as bet365, Ladbrokes and 888 all got on board.

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