giropay Casinos

GiroPay is one of the longest established online payments systems in the world, having been around since 2005. It was founded by the leading German bank Deutsche Postbank although since 2006 many other German banks have come on board with the system as it offers their customers the convenience of online payments without having to divulge their debit card or credit card numbers, or having to set up and maintain a separate eWallet account.

Like similar payment systems such as Interac (Canada), iDeal (the Netherlands) and EasyEFT (South Africa), GiroPay is limited to a single country – Germany (plus a tiny amount of Austrian Banks). You have to have an account with a participating bank in order to be able to use GiroPay.

Note: Many people confuse GiroPay with GiroBank, which is a now-defunct bank in the UK. This leads many people to believe that GiroPay is available in the UK when it isn’t. GiroPay has no connection with GiroBank.

A Brief History of GiroPay

The idea of GiroPay was conceived by Postbank in 2005 and made live one year later. The idea was to allow merchants a way of processing online payments without them having to set up an online payments system themselves. They would instead use the online payments system already created by Postbank themselves.

Several other banks eventually signed up with the GiroPay system too. By 2020 over 1,500 banking institutions had signed up for GiroPay – the majority in Germany but a few in Austria too. It is estimated that GiroPay services are now used by over 17 million customers.

GiroPay – Pros and Cons

Pros

• Provided by banks so completely secure.
• Accepted by a number of online casinos.
• No need to open a separate account.

Cons

• Only usually available to players in Germany (and some Austria).
• Not commonly available for withdrawals.

How to use GiroPay at Online Casinos

As previously stated, you do not need to open any kind of ‘GiroPay’ account in order to use GiroPay at an online casino that accepts GiroPay deposits. You do though, need to have a bank account with one of the banks that has signed up for the GiroPay scheme. There are around 1,500 individual banks available, but some of the leading ones are listed below:

• Deutsche Bank
• Commerzbank
• KFW Bankgruppe
• DZ Bank
• HypoVereinsbank
• Landesbank Baden-Wurteemberg
• Bayerische Landesbank
• Norddeutsche Landesbank
• Landesbank Hessen-Thuringen
• NRW Bank

If you are a resident of Germany and/or if you have a bank account at any German-based bank, then the likelihood is you will be able to make deposits at any online casino that accepts GiroPay payments.

When you are ready to make a deposit head to the online casino’s cashier section. Enter the amount of money that you wish to deposit and select ‘GiroPay’ as your payment method.

An applet should then pop up asking you the name of the bank from which you wish the payment to be taken. Once you have done this the login page of your bank should appear. You will be required to enter the username or TAN and password that you use with your bank’s internet banking system.

If the details are entered correctly, then you will be asked to confirm the transfer. Once you have done this the processing will commence. The money will be taken directly from your bank account and into your casino account. There should be no fees to pay.

You will probably not be able to use GiroPay to take money from your casino account and put it back into your bank account. GiroPay is used as a way for merchants to offer their customers an online payment facility without having to go through all the headaches of setting up one themselves. To this end you use GiroBank to pay the merchant – the merchant does not pay you.

GiroPay offers merchants the chance of refunding customers but very few online casinos set up this payment option. Because of this, when it comes to making a withdrawal from an online casino that accepts GiroPay payments, you will have to use a different method.

Conclusion

Online security is always a worry when it comes to making any kind of payment online. How secure is your online payment likely to be? Is your money likely to end up in the wrong hands, or – even worse – will your account be hacked?

Banks use the most stringent and secure means of transferring money over the internet and millions of transactions occur each day without the merest hint of an issue. Because GiroPay directly uses a bank’s internet banking systems, there is no more secure way of transacting financial payments online.

No matter which payments facilitator you use to make payments to online casinos, make sure that you gamble responsibly, and make sure you never gamble with money that you cannot afford to lose.