The entertainment industry is developing at a rate of knots and there are more options available today than ever before in history. Digital progress, and rapid progress at that, has created a realm where new forms of digital and online entertainment can establish themselves and spread their offerings extremely quickly. Whether they catch on with the general public and markets around the world is a different question, but in the case of one particular form of online entertainment, the emergence and rapid growth of the activity has been incredibly infectious all across the globe.
We are of course talking about online casinos. You might see online casinos and online sports betting fall under the general term “iGaming,” which is simply an umbrella term for these two forms of online gambling. Over the past decade, online gambling has evolved alongside the digital movement that is changing the way we live and go about our daily lives. And it is this digital evolution in society that is allowing people to access online casinos and online sportsbooks more readily and fund this action in a variety of ways and payment methods.
Payment Variety Proving Popular
One of the drawbacks in the past for online gambling operators was the lack of options they could offer customers to make their initial deposits. Payment methods would mirror what was being used in society which only until just over a decade ago, was limited to debit and credit cards. For the latter, casinos that take credit cards were hard to come by due to the relative ease players could spend money with credit cards and the ensuing risks that came with that.
This attitude is still adopted in the UK, which implemented a ban on credit card-fuelled online gambling in April 2020. While players are generally advised to avoid using credit cards when using online gambling platforms due to these accounts generally having higher limits, using credit cards on online gambling platforms has made a steady return as a result of two factors.
Greater Security and Awareness
Although the basic concept of credit cards accumulating debt that can be paid off at a later stage has not changed, advances in cybersecurity have made credit card transactions less vulnerable to online hackers, while two-step authentication connected with the majority of transactions have also created an additional layer of trust when using credit cards with potentially international online gambling websites.
However, despite the security factor playing a role in the revival of credit cards, the general increased awareness around the use of money on online gambling websites plays a huge role in ensuring people act responsibly on online casinos and online sports betting websites. The increased messaging around risks such as gambling addiction in particularly have raised awareness of such consequences if players spend beyond their means.
Credit Card Benefits
With the advantages of added security and increased self-awareness of spending habits, the use of various payment methods is further promoted by the greater number of bonuses made available by online gambling operators. The advances in coding and software have made it possible for online gambling operators to offer bonuses based on many different actions on a platform. These include signing up and making deposits and across all the online gambling platforms around the world, there are bonuses linked to the whole variety of payment methods including credit cards.
In the current age, more modern payment methods such as cryptocurrency are emerging, but with instability still surrounding the use of cryptocurrencies, the majority of players still stick to more traditional methods such as debit or credit cards and e-wallets. And with free bets, free spins and other bonuses to be claimed by sticking with these methods, they will likely remain popular with the online gambling community.
