Strategies for Maximizing Your Wins and Minimizing Losses When Using Credit Cards at Online Casinos

When it comes down to it, winning with online gaming is all about the details. Those small percentages and tiny differences that most players are content to ignore or overlook.

But guess what? The house advantage in any casino game is a small percentage. And casinos, both online and offline, make millions off that tiny percentage.

You should try to do the same thing if you want to win with online casino games. Minimize losses – maximise winnings. That’s the name of the game.

You’re reading CasinoPaymentOptions, however, and our main approach to gaming is through the many payment options available in online casinos. Is your choice of banking really that impactful on winnings and losses?

In a way, yes. And we’re going to show you how. Below, we’ll explain a few basic strategies for optimizing profits in casinos when using credit cards, which are some of the most popular payment methods in casino sites.

Understanding Credit Cards in Casinos

Although credit and debit cards are usually seen as the most widespread and convenient casino banking options, they have a few problems compared to some of the alternatives. Most players are quick to point out the long waiting times. Card payments usually take a few days to process withdrawals, which is not an issue e-wallets or cryptocurrencies share.

However, slow withdrawals are annoying at least and an inconvenience at worst. They don’t really affect your bottom line, assuming you’re managing your gaming bankroll properly.

However, there’s a much more important issue. Credit and debit cards are by far the most common type of payment that has to pay fees on casino withdrawals. This issue is not unique to the gaming industry, of course. Bank cards were intended to make payments, not necessarily receive them. Moreover, card companies often charge fees to the vendors and businesses that accept your payments. You might not always see the fees directly, but they may already be influencing your online spending.

For instance, though you may not be paying fees directly, cards may have different withdrawal limits or timeframes. A lot of the reasons behind this come down to what we discussed above.

More importantly, even when the casino itself doesn’t charge fees, banks often charge fees on withdrawals to cards as well. Many of you are probably thinking that your bank doesn’t charge anything. Most people use credit/debit cards regularly and never have to pay fees barring unusual circumstances.

However, casinos fall right into this category of “unusual circumstances.” Casino payments are highly regulated transfers, often to offshore companies half the world away. That’s why, on average, getting money to your bank card costs you between 2.5% and 3%. And that’s only in the West. And that’s without even counting other points where you can be charged even more, such as ATM cash withdrawals or missed payment cycles for credit cards.

If you’re paying any fees at any point, you’re digging directly into your casino profits.

Avoiding Fees and Charges

Many of you are probably thinking that there’s a simple solution here – you could just use a different method. Sadly, though, it’s not that simple.

For starters, most people don’t use credit cards in casinos because they’ve concluded it’s the best option. Most players simply use cards because it’s convenient and because they already have one. After all, you can simply walk into any store in the real world and pay with a card. You can withdraw cash whenever, wherever with an ATM. You can’t do any of those things with your PayPal account, no matter how better it is as a payment service. This opens up further issues with fees and charges.

Let’s explain through an example. Let’s say you’re using PayPal as your payment option in a casino. It’s fast, it’s widely accepted, and there are no fees for casino deposits or withdrawals. Sounds perfect, right? However, if you want to actually use your money, you’ll probably have to withdraw it from PayPal to a debit card or bank account. PayPal charges fees on such withdrawals, as you can see in our review of this popular online service. In fact, pretty much all online payment services do – it’s how they stay profitable. Essentially, you’re just adding extra steps while paying the same fees.

The best way to completely avoid fees while withdrawing from online casinos is to use your payment option for more things than gaming. Let’s use the above example to illustrate. If you withdraw to a PayPal account and then use that same account to pay online to vendors that accept PayPal, no fees are involved in any step. At least not on your end.

Alternatively, you can just use cryptocurrencies. They’re hard to get into, though, so we’ll leave them aside for now.

We understand this is not an option for everyone. It’s easier than it sounds, though. It just takes a bit of planning and bankroll management.

Managing Your Bankroll

The reason keeping all your gaming funds online is easier than it seems is that doing so fits perfectly into a few gambling best practices. Many of you have probably heard that money management is essential in online casinos – and here’s another example of that.

Here are a few tips that will help you avoid fees and thus improve winnings.

• Use e-wallets as an intermediary. Using e-wallets is not recommended just for saving money, but also as an added safety measure. Click here to find out more about e-wallets as casino banking options.
• Set a clear gaming budget and stick to it. This tip is one of many gambling essentials. If you never bring back your gaming funds to your regular bank account, it’s a lot easier to keep track of your winnings and losses.
• Have an e-wallet just for gaming money. Remember how we said it’s best to keep your money in one place and use it to pay for goods and services directly? That’s made a lot easier is you have a wallet specifically for gambling proceeds. If you want to spend your winnings somewhere, you can do so through online vendors that will help you avoid fees.
• Never take advances, credit, or debt for gambling. This is another basic piece of advice, but it’s incredibly important and worth repeating. Never bet more than you can afford to lose. Don’t take on credit to pay for your betting, and certainly don’t take cash advances to gamble with.

Conclusions

As we noted in the introduction, most of these strategies simply allow you to shave a few percentages of your losses. Hell, most of them have nothing to do with the actual casino games. However, these small percentages all add up in the long run. If you’re a dedicated casino fan you’ll definitely notice the difference after a while. Especially if you often withdraw from casinos. Hopefully, our tips will help you. Stay tuned to the CasinoPaymentOptions blog for more tips & tricks about online casinos, banking methods, and more.