Guides · Payments
Payment methods explained
One rule shapes everything else here: since April 2020 you cannot fund gambling with a credit card in Great Britain. What remains is straightforward, but the routing of withdrawals catches people out.
The essentials
- Credit cards
- banned for gambling since 14 April 2020
- Debit cards
- allowed, the most common method
- E-wallets
- widely accepted, often the quickest to receive
- Withdrawals
- usually routed back to the depositing method
- Before first payout
- identity verification must be complete
The credit card ban
Since 14 April 2020 it has been illegal for a GB-licensed operator to accept a credit card for gambling. The reasoning was direct: gambling with borrowed money turns a loss into a debt. The ban covers credit cards used through an e-wallet as well, which is the loophole people most often assume exists.
Debit cards are unaffected and remain the default. Prepaid cards and e-wallets are accepted by most operators, with the specific list varying site by site.
How withdrawals are routed
Most operators return money by the route it arrived on, as far as that is possible. Deposit by debit card and the withdrawal goes back to that card; deposit by e-wallet and it returns there. This is an anti-money-laundering practice rather than an inconvenience invented by the operator, and it has two practical consequences worth knowing in advance.
- If you deposit by a method that cannot receive payments, you will have to nominate something else and verify it.
- If you deposited from several sources, the withdrawal may be split back across them in proportion.
Why the first withdrawal takes longer
Identity verification has to be complete before a payout, and if it was not finished at sign-up it happens now — which is why a first withdrawal often feels slow while later ones do not. The account must also be in your own name and funded from your own payment methods: depositing from someone else's card is the most common reason a payout is frozen.
What we do not publish
We do not quote average payout times per operator. Stating them would mean either repeating the operator's own marketing or claiming a measurement we have not made — and neither is something you should rely on. The processing times an operator publishes are in its terms; what we can tell you is which questions to ask.
Related
See what a UKGC licence means for how customer funds are protected, and tax on winnings — the short answer being that players do not pay any.