How PayPal Helped Build A £200 Billion Online Casino Gaming Industry

TNT Magazine
 
How PayPal Helped Build A £200 Billion Online Casino Gaming Industry
Wild Casino

Online gaming such as online casinos where you can play; poker, Texas hold ’em, slot machines, virtual roulette etc. Basically all its forms have become a multi-billion-pound industry with the help of big industry players such as: bet365, LeoVegas, Bet888 and so on. Indeed, if you look at online video gaming alone, it’s now worth upwards of £140 billion. Then, once you add in online casino gaming and online betting sites, the total value of the industry exceeds £200 billion. There’s money in igaming, that’s clear. However, for companies to make money, they need to process it.

The Evolution of Online Payments Has Helped Gaming Grow

We know that companies such as Sony, Microsoft, LeoVegas, Steam, and Betway are all great at games. However, what they’re not necessarily experts in, are payments. This is why payment processors have become an integral part of online gaming and, in turn, the industry’s success over the last two decades. Indeed, if players are going to pay for content, they need safe and efficient ways to do it.

Pre-internet processors such as Visa and MasterCard have adapted to the ever-evolving ways we pay. However, they aren’t quite as efficient as companies that were forged in the fires of the internet. One company that stands above all others in this regard is PayPal. Launched in 1998 as Confinity, the company merged with Elon Musk’s X.com a year later to become the PayPal we know today. The aim was to offer online payment processing that wasn’t slowed down by the checks and balances used by traditional banking institutions.

Musk, et al found a way to do this safely and securely. Fast-forward to today and PayPal has become the default payment processor for gamers around the world. Why? The main reasons are speed and capacity. PayPal processed over £650 billion worth of transactions in 2020.

When depositing money with an online casino, you can find casinos that offer deposit bonuses or free spins, they’ll all tend to give you something extra on top of what you already deposited. Sometimes you can get a welcome offer of a 200% match bonus up to $500. But take into consideration that there can be an expiry date on the online casino bonus offers, a max in-game bet or a minimum deposit in order to redeem the online casino offer.

Online Gaming is Built on Speedy, Secure Transactions

The average processing time for Visa withdrawals at an online casino is three to five days. Withdrawals made via a PayPal online casino, such as LeoVegas, can be processed in hours. What’s more, because PayPal is optimised for mobile devices, online casino gamers have easier access to their funds. Yes, when you scroll through the top-rated PayPal casino sites, some aren’t available in parts of Europe due to local restrictions. However, in general terms, PayPal has become the go-to option for online casino and bettors who wants fast withdrawals from their poker or roulette winnings.

Another reason PayPal has become popular in online gambling and online betting is the way it secures each transaction. Online casino gamers are often tech-savvy individuals that understand the value of  security when depositing money to their online casino or betting account. PayPal protects transactions using 128-bit SSL encryption technology. It also checks your server to ensure it supports SSL 3.0 or higher before it approves a transaction. Therefore, on all levels, your money is safe.

For the online casino itself it is also quite important with security in regards to responsible gambling. The safety of the users are top priority to many online casinos, and encryption technology is just one of many criteria as part of the online casinos responsible gambling efforts. Fair Play for instance, is how you as a user want to be treated in a fair way when you gamble online. Here there are several factors to look out for, one of them is to know how slot machines work.

Finally, PayPal keeps costs to a minimum. In fact, they’re so low in most cases that for example online casino companies won’t charge you for using the service. And, once you factor in the ability to send money to friends and family for free, it’s easy to see how PayPal’s userbase grows exponentially. One gamer sends money to another so they can make online purchases and it has a domino effect. This, combined with this company’s other strengths, is why online gambling, as an industry, owes a lot of its success to modern companies like PayPal.

Last of all, it is important for us to say that even though it’s easy depositing money with an online casino as mentioned in this article, one should never try to play to get out of a bad financial situation or try to recover lost money. Gambling on online casinos to get out of financial trouble is a very slippery slope and you should always avoid this. Casino games should only be played for fun and for that reason alone. Gambling online has changed human gambling behaviour a lot, and this means that it is much easier to develop an addiction to online gambling these days. This is because online casinos are easy to sign up to, and as mentioned in this article easy to deposit money with. Before the internet, one had to commute to a traditional brick and mortar casino in order to interact with other players when playing traditional casino games such as Texas Hold ‘Em, black jack and whatnot.