Most commonly used for funding online casino accounts are credit cards and e-wallets. There is nevertheless a third and safer option in the form of prepaid vouchers. Below you can find details about all three forms of financing and the advantages of the prepaid vouchers.

Using credit cards means using borrowed money for wagering. The credit card allows players to wager until the limit of the borrowed sum was reached. Usually that amount of money is larger than what players can afford.

As far as the e-wallets are concerned, they can be funded either from a credit card or from a bank account. Regardless of the type of funding, e-wallets allow players to wager until they reach the limit of the sums they borrowed or possessed, which leaves them either with an empty bank account or in serious indebtedness.

In addition to the above funding options, there is the prepaid voucher. This is a small amount voucher that can be bought from a retail outlet for cash. There is a code printed on it that allows you to play at online casinos that accept the voucher. Given that the voucher has to be purchased beforehand with a relatively small sum of money, the prepaid voucher is a system that avoids borrowing and excessive wagering. As a consequence, this system promotes individual transactions with limited value.

The success of prepaid vouchers was ensured by two factors. One is the software technology that ties up the buyer, the seller and the online casino via the the code number imprinted on the voucher. The second factor is the availability of retail outlets spread all over the country.

European countries still turn to online gambling for financial help during times of economic crisis.

In contrast to Europe which has taken a more practical stance toward this subject, US is concerned about the social implications of online gambling.

Instead, Europe is more concerned about protecting the domestically state monopolised lotteries and other domestic gambling operators from foreign competition.

European countries seem to have reached the conclusion that it is wiser to come with a practical solution to the problem instead of continually trying to prevent gamblers wagering their money online is we also take into consideration the decline of land-based casinos.

David Trunkfield, consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers, explains:

“What’s happened is a realization that you can’t uninvent the Internet. People are gaming online. You either try to regulate and tax it, or people are going to go to the offshore operators, where you don’t get any revenue.”

This is why the European online gambling industry has been growing steadily to the point where it’s biggest in the world at present while US continues to be inflexible about this issue. This year alone in Europe, the revenues from online gambling accounted for almost half of the entire gambling industry’s revenues. In the US, despite the high demand for online services, the American online gambling ban is being rigorously reinforced since 2006 causing a downwards revenue spiral since then.

The trend setter in Europe was UK, the first major European country to embrace online gambling and begin regulating its market in 2005. Following its example, countries such as France, Italy and Denmark started regulating their markets and gaining impressive tax revenues from partially liberalizing this industry. Other EU states including Germany, Spain and Greece are interested in liberalizing their markets too.

Betfair’s Tim Phillips concludes on this:

“The gambling business is one of Europe’s real success stories online. This is a business in which Europe leads the world.”