EcoCard

ecocardEcoCard is an electronic wallet payment solution that focuses primarily on the fact that they give users a debit card that can be used to access funds in their account at any time. This is basically a cross between a prepaid debit card and an electronic wallet, and it gets some of the advantages and disadvantages of each. This option is available at a lot of online casinos, though it’s not as popular as some of the top credit cards and electronic wallets. With that having been said, players will have no problem finding sites that offer this payment method if it’s the one they want to stick to.

Account Levels

The first thing to note about this payment solution is that it has four different account levels: silver, gold, platinum and VIP. The fees for all levels of accounts are the same, but some things are different like how much you can deposit or withdraw over set periods of time. For example, you can only get out €250 in a single transaction through an ATM with the silver plan, but that jumps to €500 for the gold, platinum and VIP. There are similar limits on POS purchases with your EcoCard account with a €1,000 limit on silver accounts and €2,500 limit on gold and above.

Fee Schedule

There are certain fees for depositing to your EcoCard account and withdrawals from it. Depositing with a credit card has a fee of 2.9 percent, which is well within the industry standard, and depositing via EFT has a 4.9 percent fee, which is pretty high. Bank wire deposits have no fee instituted by EcoCard. Transferring to another EcoCard requires that the sender pays 1.5 percent, though the receiving party doesn’t have to pay anything.

For cash withdrawals from the EcoCard, you’ll have a minimum charge of €1.50 based on a rate of 2 percent no matter what level of account you have. Along similar lines, the rate for cash services is 4 percent with a minimum charge of €0.80. Additionally, any currency conversion is hit with a fee of 2.99 percent. Like most electronic wallets, their fee schedule is slightly complicated, and you should take care to make sure that you’re not combining multiple fees that you don’t have to.

Availability of EcoCard

EcoCard is definitely on the second tier of popularity and availability when it comes to depositing to online casinos. A wide range of sites offer it, especially reputable sites that have been around for a long time, but it’s not quite as popular as the top-tier casino payment methods like the most popular credit cards and e-wallets. Even with that, it’s available on a wide enough level that if it was your only payment method that you had available that you would have no trouble easily getting in on the action with just about any software provider that you could think of in the industry.

Things to Look For

When you use this payment method, there are a few things you should look for to keep your fees down. First, avoid currency conversions as much as you can because they are rarely necessary when you’re depositing to an online casino. There are sites out there with over a dozen of currencies that they take, and yours is most likely one of them. Second, withdrawals to your bank account have lower fees than using the EcoCard debit card, so that’s something to keep in mind.