The Struggle with Online Gaming Sites
When online gaming was legalized in New Jersey, Nevada, and Delaware, it was expected that it would be a major source of revenue for those states. Sites welcomed new customers by offering a no deposit bonus. Financial institutions weren’t so eager, though.
Gambling is considered a high-risk industry. This makes some financial institutions, such as American Express and Discover, weary to do business with them. Mastercard and Visa are a little more accepting – roughly 73 percent of MasterCard and 44 percent of Visa transactions, according to New Jersey Deputy Attorney General Mary Jo Flaherty, are approved. She acknowledges that this is a problem and pledges to continue to work with financial institutions to convince them to do business with them.
Aside from payment processing, another huge issue is that some sites aren’t detecting where its users are located. For an industry such as online gambling, this is crucial. If a geolocation of a user cannot be determined, there’s no way to tell whether they’re actually in a state that allows online gaming. If that’s the case, the user’s access to the site will be limited. The inability to determine a user’s geolocation could be the site’s fault, or it could be the user’s fault. Some users prevent websites from knowing where they’re connecting to the site from, which causes a huge amount of issues.
As you can imagine, these two issues are causing tremendous problems, not only for users, but for state officials as well. They saw online gaming as a huge source of revenue, and it could be, so long as the issues are worked out. Not all hope is lost, though. Lawmakers could somehow negotiate a deal, or users could try to pay using alternative methods.
Aside from using a credit card, users could use a third party payment method, such as Neteller or a Net+ Card. These pre-paid cards offer a secure method of payment and will be accepted by the site. Another method of payment is bitcoin, the controversial virtual cryptocurrency. Bitcoin acceptance hasn’t rolled out to all sites yet, so make sure to double check before trying to use it. The value of bitcoins fluctuate each day, so make sure you know how much your stash is worth.
In addition to those methods, players can also use automated clearing house transfers. These methods are the go-to payment method for those that have issues using their credit card. Once these issues are worked out, online gaming will become larger than it’s ever been in these states, which will hopefully pave the way for legalization in other states.