Online casinos are convenient, accessible, and they offer a wide range of slots, table games, and innovative gambling games. Such is their popularity that iGaming is overtaking physical casino gaming for a lot of players.
However, with that said, there are still a lot of factors at play when players choose casinos and decide whether online gambling is for them.
The Importance Of Withdrawal Options
One of the most important factors players consider when choosing a casino is payment. They want payment methods that enable convenient deposits and fast withdrawals, and to a lot of players, this is more important even than the availability of bonuses and the range of games players can access.
Some players still enjoy the convenience of legacy payment systems like credit cards and bank transfers. Others enjoy the convenience of digital wallets.
And some are coming around to the emergence of cryptocurrencies. There are also alternative payment methods like mobile payments and code-based cash payments that some players might need.
One of the most important factors that helps players decide on a payment method is the time it takes for withdrawals. If you’re fortunate enough to win, you don’t want to have to wait around days or even weeks to access those winnings.
Payment Methods
Payment method is the single biggest factor that determines withdrawal times. Some payment methods are quicker than others.
Bank cards enable you to make instant deposits, but withdrawals can take several days before they appear in your account. Bank transfers can also take several working days. Digital wallets and mobile wallets are typically instant, although they recommend that you may have to wait a couple of hours for payment.
Cryptocurrency payments are popular because transactions can be completed in a matter of minutes, often instantly.
This instant payment is one of the reasons crypto has become popular as a withdrawal method for players playing at an online casino with real money, although it also offers a higher level of privacy and anonymity than other transaction methods.
There are many other payment methods used at specific online casinos, and the withdrawal times of these can vary greatly from a few minutes to several days.
Casino Processing Time
Regardless of the payment method chosen and how quickly payments are processed on that network, the casino’s processes directly influence withdrawal time.
Some casinos will process payments instantly, eliminating any delay from their end. Others batch process, which means they wait until they have a collection of payments from customers and process them at once.
Batch processing is more convenient if the casino processes payments manually, and it can work out cheaper when dealing with certain payment methods. Batch-processed payments may take anywhere from a few hours to a few days to be processed.
Not all casinos advertise their payment processes, but if they do, you will find these details either on the site’s banking page or in the terms and conditions. If the casino doesn’t display a processing time, you can try asking customer service, or you can try making a small withdrawal after opening an account.
Location
Another factor that influences payment time, and is related to payment method, is the location of the casino. Or the location of its payment accounts. In a lot of countries, bank payments can be completed instantly to other accounts in the same country, but they can take days when sending to an account in another country.
Digital wallets and cryptocurrency wallets do not have these same payment processing issues. Whether you’re based on the same street, in the same country, or on the other side of the world, payments are processed entirely online, so they complete in the same intervals.
Smart Contracts
Blockchain casinos not only use cryptocurrencies, which benefit from instant transaction times, but they may also use smart contracts. Smart contracts are established on blockchain, and they progress and complete automatically as certain prescribed prerequisites are met.
In the case of casino withdrawals, for example, a smart contract is a relatively basic contract. When the player submits a withdrawal request, a contract is established agreeing to send the required amount of money from the casino’s wallet to the player’s wallet.
In this case, the contract can be initiated once the details of the withdrawal are checked, i.e., the casino’s system ensures the player has the funds in their account.
No human intervention is required, as all transactions, including on-site player transactions and game results, are stored on the blockchain. Smart contracts can greatly reduce or completely eliminate any casino processing time.
Loyalty Rewards
Loyalty schemes are offered by some casinos as a means of encouraging players to keep playing at their casinos. Rewards can include free spins on certain games, cashback on losses, and reload bonuses on casino deposits. In some cases, casinos might offer improved withdrawal times for their loyal customers.
This may be included as a relatively early step in the loyalty scheme, and it effectively means that withdrawals do not have to go through the same waiting process as they would for new players.
Obviously, the casino can only speed up the processes on their own end; they can’t speed up how quickly a bank submits payment from one account to another, for example.
