It goes without saying that in order to take advantage of the best sports betting opportunities in the marketplace, every bettor needs a bankroll that is loaded and can be invested in an instant. Any delay and the best odds may pass you by.
Becoming a profitable sports bettor is difficult enough without missing golden opportunities due to a lack of sportsbook functionality. Your sportsbook needs to be offering you the most secure, convenient, and fast payment methods available online today! Anything less and you are possibly missing out.
What Are The Deposit Options?
- Electronic Funds Transfer
- Debit/Credit Card Deposit
- Sportsbook Prepaid Card
- Online Bill Pay Services
- Wire Transfer
- Paynearme
- In Person at a Partnered Casino
- Paypal
- Cryptocurrency
1. Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT)
The EFT or ACH (automated clearing house) sportsbook payment method is when a customer gives their financial institution authority to direct debit their account a required amount of money to make a bill payment or in this case, deposit to their sportsbook account. It is both highly secure and fully trackable.
The downside is, that depending on the institution, it may take a number of days for the deposit to appear at the required destination. This means as a sports bettor you need to be organised and have pre planned the deposit ahead of time. In the craziness of the world we live in, that is not always possible.
A further downside is that the transaction will appear in your monthly transaction statement. At face value this is not a big deal, however, banks and financial institutions may look closely at your transaction history if you are applying for a loan for, say a house or a car. A deposit to a betting agency may not be the best look in the banks’s eyes, despite the fact it is a totally legal and very appropriate pastime for an law abiding adult to have.
The upside of the bank transfer deposit method is that, if for some reason, soon after making the transfer, you decide against depositing to your sportsbook it may be possible to cancel the transaction before it is processed. While this seems like an obvious feature of the system it becomes more pertinent when you take into account that most sportsbooks implement a minimum turnover requirement before withdrawing the money. .
This means you must turnover the deposited funds, by betting, at least once, sometimes twice, at minimum odds of -200 (1.50). A big frustration if you decide you need the money urgently for something else. Cancelling the deposit transfer with your bank prior to it being processed is a way to avoid being caught out like this.
2. Debit/Credit Card
The Debit/Credit Card deposit method is popular due to its ease and immediacy but it is not without its downsides. Clearly the instantaneous nature of the deposit allows bettors to be betting with the new funds within in minutes, perhaps seconds, submitting the request. This type of convenience comes at a cost.
The financial institution will usually see a deposit to a sportsbook as a cash advance, because it is. Cash advances are often hit with an extra fee by the banking institutions and any interest free period that may be attached to the card is usually not applied to the portion of money that was cash advanced. These extra costs should be treated by the bettor as ‘losses’ and factored into any potential profit.
Many sportsbooks, the good ones, will accept credit card deposits and have the feature situated quite prominently on their app. However sometimes when a bettor goes to make deposit it is declined. Often the sportsbook has no role in the declining of the deposit because the credit card’s host financial entity has forced the stop. While it is frustrating, it is fair enough, as some of the time fraudulent credit card activities have targeted sportsbooks where money can essentially be laundered.
If your card is declined by your sportsbook, they are not suspicious of criminal activity, they are merely following the wishes of the financial institution. It is suggested you look into financial agencies who can provide you with a card that will allow you to deposit into sportsbook accounts.
Another way around a declined credit card is by using a prepaid visa card. These are more widely accepted and avoid the issue of your bank blocking the transaction. The downside to these cards is that they require the bettor to go out and purchase the card and load money onto it ahead of time, which slows the deposit process down a little.
3. Sportsbook Branded Card
The sportsbook card is a recent innovation in the US sports betting market, where the charge has been led by Pointsbet. Although it is not a new concept in other more developed corporate betting jurisdictions like the UK, Europe and Australia.
Using Pointsbet as the example, after requesting the card through the app or web browser, a short time later you will receive in the mail a Debit Mastercard, with Pointsbet branding, which can be preloaded online with cash to use as a deposit. Money can be loaded onto the card using traditional bank transfer methods or through a personal credit card that would otherwise be declined by the sportsbook.
The added feature that makes the Sportsbook Card one of the better innovations is that, in the case of the Pointsbet Card, it can be used to make purchases wherever mastercard is accepted, as long as sufficient funds are in the betting account. Transfers out of the betting account to personal bank accounts using the card. Everything about this is good news for bettors!
4. Online Bill Pay Services
Online bill pay services are a useful and probably under utilised deposit method. Offering security, immediacy and sophisticated tracking, there are not many downsides. A small fee taken by the bill pay service operator is about the only negative.
The bill pay service will be offered by your banking institution and is accessible through your internet banking platform. Most of the corporate bookmakers in the US will accept this form of deposit.
5. Wire Transfer
Wire Transfer has long been used to move money across borders where there is a currency issue. It is seen as safe and secure method of moving money but not quick or, truth be told, as accessible as many other methods.
Wire transfer has been popular with sports bettors who use offshore betting agencies to get action. In those circumstance a wire transfer makes sense, although with the advent of cryptocurrencies perhaps there are better ways to achieve the same result.
With sports betting coming to the US in a legalised form the wire transfer method of depositing may become less utilised (and should). There are potentially more convenient and faster methods available for the average sports bettor whose deposit amount is reflective of a recreational gambler.
The downside to wire transfer is that you generally need present at the bank branch in person (although this is changing) and to use the service the bank will charge a fee, sometimes in the vicinity of $20 -$30. Fees incurred while depositing money are toxic for any sports bettors bottom line. They are not necessary and essentially start the bettor off in the red.
Neteller is a classic example of wire transfer company. It is widely accepted across many US sports books. If you are looking to use the wire transfer method then these guys are potentially your best option.
6. PayNearMe – Cash Deposit
The PayNearMe payment network is a widely accepted and quite useful way to deposit cash into your sportsbook account. With a devoted service to depositing into online gaming accounts PayNearMe is reliable, secure, and transparent, but not fast. It can take up to four banking days to appear in your sportsbook account. Great if you are organised but no good if you are attempting to take advantage of an immediate betting opportunity.
PayNearMe uses locations like 7-Eleven, Family Dollar and CVS Pharmacies which allows them over 27 000 locations across the US. For sports bettors, PayNearMe will only allow deposits to sportsbooks in the states where sports betting is legalized. Further to this they are able to enforce responsible gaming protocols with rolling 30 day limits on deposits, and real time funding requests, which allow sports books to decline funds being deposited to less reputable accounts.
PayNearMe saves customers having to link their sports betting account to credit or debit cards and instead use cash, which is a good way to assist bettors in managing their betting spend. There is no doubt about it, handing over cold hard cash has a more ‘real’ feeling to it than transfering money through cyberspace. That feeling does give a bettor some time to contemplate the real value of the money they are about to put at risk.
7. At a Partnered Casino
The law in most states that have legalised sports betting dictates that the sports books must be connected to an already existing casino through some kind of partnership. This is good and bad for various reasons, but one opportunity it opens up is to be able to deposit money into your online sportsbook account while you are inside the partnered casino.
Clearly this is convenient only if you frequent the casino which on a day to day basis most recreational bettors do not. Mobile and online betting is set to dominate the sports betting marketplace and therefore this method of depositing is almost insignificant as it is inconvenient for the regular bettor. Modern sports betting is nothing like what has been seen in Vegas over the last number of decades. People want to bet on the move and that is where the real revenue growth will be. The in person casino deposit payment method does not fit that model in any way shape or form.
8. PayPal
The most widely used online payment service globally, PayPal, is slowly becoming a player in the mobile and online sports betting space. As an example the major corporate sportsbooks in New Jersey, including Draftkings, Fanduel, and Pointsbet all accept Paypal. This is not only super convenient, it is fast, secure, cost effective, mobile and transparent.
There is a cost associated with using PayPal but that occurs at the time of depositing money into the PayPal account from a credit or debit card. If money is already sitting in the PayPal account then there are no fees associated with making a deposit to the sportsbook account.
A further advantage of using PayPal is that money withdrawn from the sportsbook account can be immediately used to make purchases on other internet based platforms like Amazon,eBay, Etsy or any number of other retail outlets. Convenience and practicality.
9. Cryptocurrency
Cryptocurrencies rely on blockchain technology to be validated. The blockchain is a decentralized ledger that keeps records of time, date, who is participating in a transaction and the amount transacted (among many data bits which give it uses well beyond the movement of money). It is very secure, fast and totally borderless.
Not only can the blockchain be used to verify transactions involving cryptos it can also be used to verify and result wagers between bettors in peer to peer style betting. That is a whole other article and won’t be dealt with here today.
There are numerous cryptocurrencies in use globally, some more popular than others. The likes of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash and Etherium are some of the more popular and widely transacted currencies. To utilise a cryptocurrency a bettor must first sign up to a an exchange, like Coinbase, which at the heart of it acts much like an eWallet. A bettor simply purchases currency at an agreed exchange rate, which fluctuates, and then uses that cryptocurrency much the same way they would actual dollars.
While many US corporate sportsbooks, much like the corporate books in other jurisdictions, have not adopted cryptos, they may do in the future. This space is still developing and adapting and therefore it represents some risk. The geo restrictions around legalized sports betting in the US means that using US dollars allows sportsbooks to keep better keep track of bettors behaviour and allows for more accurate reporting to appropriate authorities.
Offshore sportsbooks, who accept bettors from other countries, were early adopters of the crypto technology to help them overcome international currency issues. Essentially this means that a bettor using those books, completes the currency exchange (domestic to crypto) before they interact with the offshore book making for more seamless dealings between the bookmaker and the bettor.
One hurdle to the adoption of crypto with domestic corporate bookmakers is that it is essentially a foreign exchange currency play as well as the acceptance of a wager. This adds a whole other layer of risk that, rightfully so, they don’t really need to expose themselves to. Watch this space for changes to this aspect of sportsbook payments.
The Game Start Now!
Having access to immediate funds in your sportsbook account is one of the most important factors in becoming a profitable sports bettor. Understanding the payment options available to you as a bettor, their upside and downsides, means you can become a more efficient and sophisticated bettor, able to grab those best prices when they arise. If you have accounts with multiple sportsbooks then having many payment options at your fingertips becomes even more critical, specially if you need to move money from one book to another.
As always choose a method that suits your needs and helps you to track your money flows at all times. Good luck bettors!!
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