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PayPal Casino, Slot & Bingo Sites
Many UK facing online casinos, bingo sites and slot sites offer PayPal as a payment method and this is very convenient for UK players as so many of them already have a PayPal account.
- What Is PayPal?
- Why Use PayPal for Casino Deposits?
- What Else Do I Need To Know?
- The Future of Paypal as a Deposit Method
What is PayPal?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last 25+ years you will know that PayPal is an e-wallet that has been widely used for more than 20 years to buy and sell items on eBay; in fact, it was owned by eBay from 2002 to 2014 and if you regularly bought or sold then you almost certainly already have a Paypal account – along with 218 million others across 202 markets and 25 currencies.
The reason that Paypal was so popular for eBay transactions was that it added a layer of trust, protecting purchasers in the event of non delivery or of items not being as described, and making it unnecessary for vendors to share their bank account details. The safety, security and convenience that made Paypal so ubiquitous are still major plus points of the platform today and its sheer market penetration makes it an obvious choice for anyone seeking an alternative deposit method.
While there are other e-wallet systems such as Skrill and Neteller and other e-wallet apps such as MuchBetter, none of them have anything like the popularity with the general public that PayPal has.
The UK is one of only a very few countries where Paypal can be used for gambling transactions. Due to Paypal’s high standards of trust and safety, they only support payments to and from online gambling sites in fully regulated environments.
Gambling transactions from PayPal accounts can be funded by debit card or by linked bank account. Credit cards are not allowed for this type of transaction. It used to be the case that you could deposit using Paypal without having a card at all as you could fund it by selling things on Ebay, but this is no longer allowed as it’s flagged as a third party payment which breaches AML (anti money laundering) regulations.
Why Use PayPal For Casino Deposits?
- When you use a card to fund your PayPal account, the card details are NOT passed to the site you are playing at. The card issuer, however, IS aware of where the payment is actually going (and will flag any transactions they consider suspicious).
- If you deposit directly with a debit card you will normally have to withdraw winnings to the same card you used to deposit and if your card number has changed (for instance after being lost or stolen) this can be a problem. If you deposit with PayPal you can withdraw to PayPal regardless of whether the card you funded the PayPal account with is still valid.
- Withdrawals to PayPal are typically faster than withdrawals to cards or by bank transfer (they are normally instant once approved).
- As PayPal is widely accepted outside the world of iGaming, you can use winnings that have been withdrawn to Paypal for purchases elsewhere with no need to pay back into your bank account.
- There’s an optional app in iOS and Android versions making it safe and easy to deposit using Paypal while out and about.
- The deposit process is quick and easy – just select the amount you wish to deposit and press the Paypal button. You’ll then be invited to log in to your Paypal account to authorise the transaction (and, if necessary, fund it). Paypal does the rest!
- You can link several different cards to your Paypal account and only need to remember one password.
What Else Do I Need To Know?
- In order to be able to add PayPal as a payment method you need to ensure you register with the same email address as is on your PayPal account. Most of us have more than one email address, so this could be an issue if you didn’t think about that when you signed up but want to use Paypal to make a deposit later on.
- Although PayPal is well known for offering buyer protection (e.g. for eBay purchases that are not received or not as described), be aware this does not extend to online gambling.
- Quite a lot of UK slot sites these days accept Paypal, but exclude deposits made with Paypal from any bonus offers. The reason for this is that a few years ago, there was widespread, organised abuse of casino welcome offers using a different e-wallet, Skrill. They exploited the facility to send money to or from an e-wallet via an account that belongs to someone else. Most casinos have responded to this by applying additional rules (such as a very low stake size) to Skrill players, excluding them from offers or by stopping accepting Skrill altogether, but some have gone even further and excluded all e-wallets from their welcome offer. This is becoming even more prevalent as we go into 2026; all Rank Interactive sites for example exclude Paypal deposits from their welcome offer. Always check the terms and conditions before depositing to see if your deposit qualifies!
- Some of the bingo and slot sites that accept Paypal deposits only do so from existing players, not new players – you would need to register and verify a debit card and use it to make a deposit before you can add Paypal as a deposit method.
- Although PayPal is a good option for both safety and convenience the very popularity of the service means it is often targeted by hackers and fraudsters. If you use it, watch out for Paypal related phishing scams. This is when you receive an email saying there is an irregularity with your account and inviting you to login to view transactions. The email includes a link which appears to be to Paypal, but actually goes to a fake Paypal login page – the object being to capture your login details and hijack the account. Paypal do send out genuine emails from time to time reminding account holders that they can view recent transactions, and some of the phishing emails can be extremely authentic looking and thus trap the unwary. The safest strategy is never to click on a link in an email to log in, but always navigate independently to the Paypal site to log in and check your account just in case, even if you think the email is definitely from Paypal. Don’t forget also to follow basic security recommendations such as making sure your PayPal password is strong and NOT the same as any of your other passwords.
The Future of Paypal As A Casino Deposit Method
The future has been looking a bit shaky for Paypal as a deposit method at bingo and slot sites and online casinos in the UK ever since 2020 when the Gambling Commission banned the direct or indirect use of credit cards for gambling transactions. Payment providers therefore needed to come up with a solution to prevent players from using credit cards to fund deposits via e-wallets, prepaid vouchers and other alternative payment methods.
If you’ve made a deposit at a UK gambling site with Paypal in the last few years you’ll have encountered their solution; for anything flagged as a gambling transaction, you only have the option to pull funds direct from your bank account or via a debit card, not via a credit card.
This hasn’t stopped some operators – Gamesys for example – either phasing out Paypal altogether or only allowing players who opened their account prior to April 2020 to use it. As the operator and payment processor are both responsible for policing whether a credit card might have been involved at some stage, you can see that they might simply not want the hassle. Plus, it may be harder to carry out age and ID verification on a player who doesn’t supply debit card details.
There’s quite a bit more to it than that, though, and it’s connected with WHY the Gambling Commission banned players from depositing with credit cards. AFFORDABILITY (or as we must now call it financial vulnerability) is the issue and sick as you may be of it, you’re going to continue hearing that word a lot in relation to UK players over the next few years. Basically, the Gambling Commission (and the UK government) want to stop UK players from having the opportunity to gamble with money they can’t afford to lose, and the credit card ban was just the beginning
Not being able to use a credit card makes it MUCH harder for people to gamble with borrowed money, but it does not make it impossible. The trouble with PayPal is that a player who uses it to deposit and withdraw could easily be circumventing financial problems elsewhere. They can pay into Paypal (or even have a third party pay into their Paypal, though this is now being cracked down on) in order to be able to make deposits and they can also spend any winnings independently of their bank account – which, meanwhile, could be seriously in the red. The more operators are expected to be on top of affordability checking, the less appealing it becomes for them to allow players to use payment methods that bypass their bank account.
The question then is, as affordability check requirements become more onerous, will operators still want or need players who are unwilling or unable to deposit with methods other than Paypal?
