If this is your first venture into the world of online casinos, learning and preparing yourself about the customer verification process will save you plenty of time and aggravation in the future. A person who has played at the online casinos in the past is well aware of the know-your-customer (KYC) procedure established at every online casino, but if this is your first time, it’s better to know what lies ahead and make the entire process much smoother and faster.
Let’ start with an explanation of the verification process itself. Because of the nature of the business, every online casino today will require their customers to submit certain documents in order to verify their identity. Unlike a traditional casino, where if you win a jackpot you can just show your ID to the attendant (or if you are withdrawing money at the cashier), with the online casinos this face-to-face contact is non-existent. So in order for the casino to make sure you are who you are – they will request copies of certain documents all of us have access to. Here is the list of documents most commonly requested by the online casino when they try to verify your identity:
- Copy of Driver’s License or ID
- Copy of Passport
- Copy of utility bill showing your name and address
- Copy of bank statement with your name and address
These are the most common document options for verifying your casino account. Keep in mind that you don’t need copies of all of them, usually the casinos will request two copies, one of a drivers license and one of a utility bill. The management just wants to make sure you are who you claim to be and not someone who is using a stolen identity.
Keep in mind that the casino will ask for documents when you request your first withdrawal, not when you open the account. This catches a lot of people off-guard – the open an account, deposit money, play for a while and when they go to request their first withdrawal of their winnings – they get the email asking for the documents to verify the identity.
Even though some people may tell you the casinos do this because they don’t care who loses money, only who wins, the actual reason is less sinister. It takes at least a day for the customer service to go through all the documents and verify your identity and who wants to wait a day or two just to be able to play? When you sign up at an online casino you are doing so because you want to play the slots right now, not tomorrow or the day after. It’s also a time-saver for the casino personnel, who only have to review documents from players who are withdrawing for the first time, not all the customers that are signing up. If the casinos had to review the documents of every sign-up at the casino at the time they sign up, it would probably take more than a week for the documents to be cleared in each case, because of the immense backlog.
Many people will also wonder if it’s safe to send such documents to an online casino, and it’s a perfectly valid question. If you’ve chosen to play at an online casino we have approved – you have nothing to worry about. Those casinos have a long (read more than a decade) track of being safe and secure, not only with the copies of the documents, but with all data pertaining to their customers. Of course, there are other casinos who are a bit less stringent in protecting their customer’s privacy and even worse, some are outright rogue and will either use your info, such as email, or sell it to a third-party marketer. Avoid being roped in by such casinos by simply choosing only among the approved gambling websites here.
And finally, we should underline that you are required to verify your account and send those documents only one time. Once you have verified your casino account, it remains so forever and you don’t have to worry about it again. Save time and speed up your first withdrawal with the online casino by finding out which documents your chosen casino requires and have the copies ready after you request your first withdrawal. The email asking for documents will come, guaranteed, and you will be ready right away.