Visa Casinos

Visa is, without doubt, or argument, the biggest company in the world when it comes to the facilitating of payments between customers and retailers. If you have ever made a payment for anything, whether it be in the real world or online, and you haven’t use cash or credit, then the chances are you’ve made a Visa payment.

Visa is also the most commonly-used deposit method utilised by online casinos throughout the world. You should find it easy to discover an online casino that accepts Visa payments, but here are a few things you should still know before you go off searching for online Visa casinos.

A Brief History of Visa

Visa has been around for a lot longer than you possibly think, since 1958 in fact. It was set up by the Bank of America as a credit card as a countermeasure to rival credit card company Master Charge. Master Charge maintained the lion’s share of the credit card market though and changed to MasterCard. Bank of America had called their credit card program BankAmericard but was renamed to Visa in 1976.

The fortunes of Visa improved significantly in the late 1980s and 1990s when they offered banks the chance to process direct debit payments from their customer’s account. This was opposed to credit card payments which would build up and then be paid by customers at a later date. Debit payments were processed instantly with the money being removed from the paying customer’s account there and then, as long as the customer had sufficient funds in their accounts. Although initially not popular in the US where it seemed people were more content to amass credit card bills, the direct debit system took off in Europe, Asia and Australia.

If you discount China which has its own debit card payment system China UnionPay, then one out of every two-card payments made every day throughout the world is a Visa card payment.

Visa – Pros and Cons

Pros

• You probably already have access to a Visa payment system.
• Nearly every online casino anywhere will allow Visa payments.
• You can deposit via Visa, and you can withdraw just as easily.
• Extremely safe and secure

Cons

• So easy to use it can be hard to keep track of your payments.

How to use Visa at Online Casinos

If you are based in Europe or Australia, then it is very likely that if you have a bank account, then you have access to Visa payment facilities. If you live in Asia, then you might have Visa facilities but if your bank in the Americas then you probably don’t. Unfortunately, in the majority of cases, you can only use Visa if you have an attached bank account. There is no other way of using Visa as a deposit method unless you have a bank account with Visa facilities.

When it comes to making deposits at an online casino using Visa could not be simpler. Go to the casino’s banking facilities and choose Visa as your deposit method. You will have to enter the long number on the front of your card, the expiry date and the three-digit code on the back. You may have to do something different depending upon your jurisdiction, but the process is simple enough. You may also have to go through a further verification step, but this is down to Visa and your bank, and not the online casino at which you are playing.

Your money will be taken out of your bank account and placed into your casino account almost instantaneously. When it comes to withdrawals, you only need to reverse the process. You probably will have needed to have deposited via Visa at the online casino you wish to withdraw from before such withdrawals are allowed.

Withdrawals via Visa take much longer than deposits at most (but not all) online casinos even though the process is the same as depositing. The casino may insist on a pending period, and then a ‘processing period’ which is usually between three and five banking days.

Conclusion

There is no more popular deposit method used at online casinos throughout the world than Visa debit card payments. It is actually tough to find an online casino or slots site that does not use Visa as its premier payments system. If you have a bank account in many areas of the world then you probably already have access to a Visa payments process and its one that’s extremely safe and essentially secure.

May you be blessed with good fortune if you use Visa to make payments to your online casino of choice, but as ever, remember to never gamble with money that you cannot afford to lose.