Credit Card Poker Sites
It is a fact of life as a poker player in the United States that making a deposit at just about any online poker site is going to be an adventure. For some of us, the disappointment of seeing our credit card refused by a poker site is akin to watching your all-in pocket Aces lose on the river. You know its just part of the deal, but it still sucks!
Outside of the US, credit cards are still a valid option for depositing at most poker sites. Party Poker, Titan Poker, bet365, and many other great poker sites gladly accept credit cards from players throughout much of the world.
Focusing solely on the US friendly sites, most will want to look immediately at the two largest sites in the world. Unfortunately, Americans who are using a credit card to deposit at either PokerStars or Full Tilt Poker will likely end up disappointed. Neither site has had success processing credit cards for US players and in most cases, they will not even try. Again, for players throughout Europe and most of the rest of the world, credit cards will be readily accepted by both PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker.
Let’s look at some sites that are a little more friendly for US credit card depositors. Some of the most successful credit card processors when it comes to online poker happen to also be sports books. In fact, Sportsbook, which operates the poker site they call Play Aces, has one of the best credit card successful deposit rates in the industry. One of their partner sites on the Merge Network, Players Only Poker, also does great at accepting credit card deposits. Because these two sites are on the Merge Network, they come highly recommended.
Merge has built a reputation for high quality service and a very solid network. Other sites on the Merge Network will attempt to process credit cards from US players with limited success. Carbon Poker, Gr88 and Overbet Poker all accept credit cards as payment. Players outside the States will have no issues. Within the US borders, it is much more unstable.
Another popular US friendly network is CEREUS - home of UB and Absolute Poker. Both sites recommend VISA and MasterCard as deposit options for US players. However, the success rate is definitely lower than the sites mentioned previously. MasterCard especially is almost never successful. So much so that we do not even recommend trying it. VISA cards on the other hand have been more successful. If you are trying to make a deposit with a VISA card, Absolute Poker and UB (formerly Ultimate Bet) are definitely great options.
The Cake Network is quite popular with US players as well. Unfortunately, players on Cake have reported that credit card deposits are very often not successful. Therefore we would not count on funding your Cake Network account with a credit card.
As this article makes clear, funding an online poker account by way of credit card is not nearly as simple as it once was. However, there are still some very good, reputable sites and networks that do their best to process credit card payments for all of their players. If you are attempting to deposit with plastic, one other thing to keep in mind is that some banks are more strict about allowing their cards to be used for deposits on gambling sites than others.
Almost all banks would stop the transaction if they knew it were for online gambling (that is what UIGEA is about after all), but some have a better process for determining the true nature of the transaction. With that in mind, just because a card from one bank is not accepted does not mean that another card from a different bank would not work.