Without seamless and ample routes between our bank accounts and online gambling platforms, the entire industry would cease to have made anywhere near the impact it has over the last 30 years.
In truth, it’s been a team effort. While online casinos definitely pioneered in more creative ways than many other industries that were just finding their feet online, fintech companies also identified that online casinos would be the most lucrative egg to crack. By working together, they unlocked the door to a multibillion-dollar industry that is continuing to break new ground decades later.
Security and speed of payments have rarely fallen too far down the agenda of online gambling companies. They’re the glue that holds a lot of their platforms and ideas together. If a platform has any payment issues or problems with its deposit and withdrawal facilities, it can cost them thousands of dollars a minute.
Identifying fast payment casinos
Payment methods have become so important in the industry that some new providers will revolve their entire business model around being the fastest withdrawal casino, and dozens try and fight it out for this title.
Now, this conversation becomes more nuanced when we zoom out slightly and realize that there are dozens of payment methods to contend with as well. Casino gamers identify fast payment casinos by seeking the opinions and assessments of experts who understand the industry. NewCasinos.com uses various tools to identify which casinos have the fastest and most secure payments and which are slightly behind.
While we haven’t mentioned security much yet, online casinos need to be secure to function, so the speed of transactions is where a lot of the action and innovation is. Where site security is industry-standard and applied across the sector, payment methods can be the route new providers use to make a name for themselves, so there’s much more to dissect.
Can casinos guarantee speedy transactions?
Some big names in the business have been doing this for 25 years, so the chances a new casino will emerge overnight and be able to do it any quicker is quite unlikely.
That doesn’t stop them from trying though. The rise of cryptocurrency in 2024 and blockchain casinos in light of the meteoric rise in the price of digital assets has highlighted that there’s definitely a market for alternate payment systems if they can match or surpass the more traditional options.
Blockchain casinos remove any need for a third party; all payments are recorded on the blockchain and verified using cryptography.
This results in more people seeking them out, as there are no issues with a bank freezing a transaction or blocking your card; it’s a case of connecting your crypto wallet and making a deposit within a few seconds, with all the transactions being publicly accessible for both verification and security purposes.
Traditional payment methods for online gambling
More traditional methods such as VISA and Mastercard are quick; at the very most, they typically take 48 hours, depending on who you use. Fast payment casinos will aim to do this within a few hours, but every minute counts when they aim to make it their unique selling point. The same applies to PayPal, Apple Pay and Google Pay — with one in 10 adults in the UK going cashless in 2019, a number that has likely accelerated since.
These payment systems are so commonplace and widely used by the most prominent gambling platforms in the world that it’s challenging to guarantee a faster payout time. However, as long as you’re verified on the site, many of them will often aim to get your withdrawals to you as quickly as possible.
Of all the Apple products that have launched, Apple Pay could be the one that helps keep them in the global tech race. That might sound a bit daft to say given how popular iPhones and iPads are, but as other phones look to challenge them on this front, the practical use case of e-wallets and digital cards could be what keeps them at the top of the global tech world over the next 20 or 30 years.
Summary
VISA, PayPal and Mastercard are used so universally that they remain people’s fastest and most secure payment methods. If there is an issue, they can report it directly to their provider, whether it is a bank, credit card company or part of a PayPal guarantee.
Not only has this universality created routes where their payments are often the fastest, but it has also meant that they spearhead many financial security innovations that help keep your information secure online. For instance, VISA was one of the first companies to roll out biometric ID, and PayPal was one of the first to explore two-factor authentication.
It’s paramount for online casinos to have fast and secure payment methods; if they don’t have both, or they offer noticeably less than the competition, they will have a tough time staying with the leading pack.
Our picks for the top payment methods are the tried-and-tested ones: Visa, Mastercard and PayPal. However, e-wallets are secure too, and cryptocurrency payments will create more of a headache for these traditional titans over the next decade or two.