Questions to ask before depositing |
If you are playing at a sportsbook that takes credit cards, you should be careful in this climate. As you may already know, in the last few months some of the biggest gaming sites had their bank accounts seized and their domain names taken away in a DOJ sting. It resulted in some companies going belly up due to the amount of money they had in the bank accounts that got confiscated.
As a result, players in these sportsbooks were left empty handed with no recourse whatsoever.
Aside from the DOJ, there are many scammers who contact sportsbooks offering credit card processing. However, their sole intention is to take these funds and run. This has occurred numerous times and will continue to happen once these gaming companies are willing to take the risk of accepting credit cards.
The other risk for sportsbooks taking plastic is some players will make chargebacks. Once the chargeback rate gets too high, they run the risk of having the banks shut down their accounts and seizing the money for a period of time.
So if your sportsbook main deposit method is via credit cards or ACH then you should be asking them what happens if their processing bank is frozen. Do they have funds outside of these accounts if lots of players start asking for withdrawals? If so, will it be the same time frame or would it take weeks or even months to be sent?
As an independent watch dog site, we are now very hesitant in recommending books that rely heavily on taking credit cards to stay in business.
The safest way for a book to receive and send money from a player now is via person to person transfer.
Person to Person transfers go directly from you to the sportsbook or from the sportsbook to you, and there is no bank involved. It’s fast, the most secure way of sending and receiving funds and you can do it online or over the phone without leaving your house.
That’s why we have scoured the industry and found 1 site so far that are now only taking Person to Person transfers as their main way of taking in and sending out money. They are Totalbets and have been in business since 1999.
We personally went to their office and spoke to the people in charge. They decided to only take deposits via person to person due to getting stiffed by several banks in the past on credit card deposits.
They admitted that only accepting person to person transfers has limited their pace in growth but this also made them one of the safest sportsbooks right now.
Five years ago when they were taking deposits via credit cards, a few banks folded and ran with the money. They were able to pay off players but it left them having to start almost from scratch.
They realized that this kept happening more often than not, so they decided to either stay in the business by taking plastic or scale down, be much safer and just do person to person transfers.
They decided to go the safer route for both themselves and players and now only take this kind of deposit. They started this 4 years ago and said they couldn’t have been happier. They have stayed small but most importantly, player funds are safe with them.
We highly recommend this book and guarantee if there are any problems with Totalbets, we will be here to help. You can contact us at info at sportsbooks.net if you have any comments or questions.
