Skrill to exit Canada casino gambling market

One of the most popular online casino payment processors, the e-wallet Skrill (formerly Moneybookers), has confirmed their planed exit from the Canadian online gambling market. Sad news for the many Canadian gamblers, as Skrill announced this week that they will stop accepting transactions to and from Canada. The ban of Canadian casino players will start on January 1st 2014 and we highly recommend players be proactive and withdraw any balance they may keep with the ewallet as soon as possible. Even though we don’t foresee any liquidity problems with Skrill, many people will be rushing to withdraw their money, which could in turn slow down the payment time, so the sooner you get started the sooner you will get your money in the bank account.

The company has not given any reason as to why it is seizing to work with Canadian online casino customers. We can only speculate to the reason, but this is not the first time a major online gambling ewallet has exited the Canada market, Neteller was another big name that stopped processing online casino transactions in Canada. The most likely explanation is that Skrill will focus on more regulated markets, such as UK, and may have succumbed to pressure from Canadian authorities. While online gambling has not been criminalized in Canada, it has not been legalized either. Many online gambling companies chose to simply shun the market rather than carry the risk of being involved in lengthy litigation,that no matter the outcome, will be pricey. There are still plenty of online casinos accepting Skrill payments.

With first the Neteller and now Skrill exit, Canadian online casino players now have even lesser choice of alternative payment methods for deposits and withdrawals at the gambling website. Instadebit is still available and will likely remain so in the long term, considering it is a depositing method for Canada alone and does not work with other countries.

Comments are closed.