[Written By External Partner]
Online casinos in 7 US states took in $10.73 billion in 2025, 27.6% more than in 2024, according to the American Gaming Association. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, online casino revenue passed land-based casino revenue for the first time. That money arrives through card payments and bank transfers, and the banks behind both treat gambling as a restricted category.
Merchant Codes for Licensed Wagering
Card networks sort merchants by a 4-digit merchant category code. Gambling has long used 7995, the code for betting, casino gambling and lottery tickets, and many US issuers decline online 7995 transactions by default. The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006, enforced through the Federal Reserve’s Regulation GG since December 2009, requires banks to block payments for unlawful internet gambling, and a 7995 code alone does not tell the issuer if the wager is legal in the player’s state.
The networks later added US-only codes to separate licensed activity. Code 7801 covers government-licensed online casinos, with neighboring codes for government-owned lotteries and licensed horse and dog racing. A licensed operator processing under 7801 tells the issuer that the transaction comes from a regulated market. To use that code, the acquirer has to enroll the operator with the networks and confirm its state license, a step a standard retail merchant account skips.
Deposit Methods and Issuer Restrictions
Credit cards are now rare as a deposit method in US online gambling. Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Oregon, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia prohibit credit card funding for online sports betting, and the largest US operators stopped taking credit card deposits between August 2025 and May 2026. Cost to the player was part of the concern, since an issuer can treat a gambling deposit as a cash advance, with a fee and interest from the first day.
Deposits now come mostly from debit cards and bank transfers, and each has its own failure points. A debit deposit can be declined because the issuer blocks the gambling code outright or because a fraud model flags a first payment to a new merchant. A bank transfer depends on the player linking an account and having the balance to cover it.
Deposit Routing Across Methods
A declined deposit often ends the session, so operators give each attempt a second path. If a debit card fails, the cashier page offers an instant bank payment or a stored bank account on the same screen. Specialized igaming payment solutions combine card acceptance, bank transfers and payouts in one account set up for licensed gambling, so the operator can retry a failed deposit by another method without sending the player to a separate site. Each license comes with its own list of approved deposit methods, and an operator active in 5 states may need 5 slightly different cashier pages.
Payout Speed and Closed-Loop Rules
Licensed operators generally pay winnings back to the method the player deposited with. This closed-loop rule limits the use of a gaming account to move money from one source to another without play. A payout sent to a debit card over the card networks’ push-payment rails can arrive within minutes. A payout by ACH takes longer, though the network now settles payments 4 times each business day, and Nacha raised the per-payment limit for Same Day ACH to $1 million in March 2022.
Push payments to cards are priced per transaction, while ACH is cheaper and slower, so many operators offer both and let the player choose.
Player Deposit Limits in the Payment Flow
Several states set limits on how players fund and use gambling accounts. Massachusetts requires every licensed gambling company to let customers set voluntary spending limits and join a self-exclusion list. A limit only works if every deposit method counts toward the same total, so a player who reaches the cap on a debit card is also stopped at the bank transfer option. That requires payment records from all methods to roll up to one player account as each deposit happens. A player enrolled in a state’s self-exclusion program has to be blocked at the cashier as well as at the login, including any bank account linked to that player’s name.
Identity, Location and Anti-Money-Laundering Controls
In New Jersey, where Governor Chris Christie signed the internet gambling bill into law in February 2013, a player must be 21 or older and physically inside the state when each wager is placed, and the operator must confirm the player’s age and identity before any play.
Payment data is used in those checks. A card or bank account held in a name different from the player account is grounds to hold a deposit for review.
Casinos are also financial institutions under the Bank Secrecy Act. Licensed operators file currency transaction reports for cash activity over $10,000 in a gaming day and suspicious activity reports when a pattern points to money laundering. The payment provider’s transaction records form part of that audit trail.
Chargebacks From Losing Sessions
A common dispute in wagering starts when a player loses a deposit and then tells the card issuer the charge was unauthorized. A 2025 chargeback study by Mastercard put the average chargeback in its gaming, gambling and cryptocurrency group at $99, second only to travel at $120, and classed 52% of gaming chargebacks as fraudulent. About 11% of those chargebacks are written off without a challenge.
Operators that contest them rely on evidence a retail merchant account seldom collects, including geolocation logs, device records, game histories and the deposit limits the player set. Each network sets a deadline for contesting a chargeback with documents, and a missing record at that point usually means the dispute is lost. A processor that stores those records next to each transaction shortens the time it takes to build a response.
Cost of a Generic Merchant Account
Running wagering through a standard merchant account costs an operator in two places. Deposits coded as general gambling are declined by issuers that cannot tell a licensed casino from an offshore one, and players who hit those declines may not try again. Disputes from losing sessions arrive with no location or session records attached, so the operator pays them. In a market that grew 27.6% in 2025, both losses rise with every state that legalizes online play.
