Managing Your Money Online

You've won big, but now the cards are running against you and it's time to move on. So what's the best way to manage your cash? From moving funds around to accessing your winnings, we explore your options.

You know how it goes - the possible straight went crooked, the aces-high full house turned up empty and the hearts flush half an hour ago was just a flash in the pan. The cards have turned against you and it's time to find another poker room or online casino to play in.

Every online casino or poker room makes it as quick and easy as possible to deposit your money, but removing it again can sometimes be slower - so what options are available when your style of play involves hopping from room to room, moving your stake to follow the luck?

Research shows that online gamblers know exactly what they want when it comes to payment systems: they want security, they want to move between different gaming sites easily, and they want to be able to withdraw their money at will.

And, although you almost certainly have a credit or debit card already, flashing the plastic isn't always the most effective way to achieve that, even if it can be the simplest method. While credit cards let you pay money into your casino account, they don't always let you take it out again - some only let you pay back your original deposit, others won't let you pay back anything at all.

Using a debit card avoids this problem, but not everyone likes giving their card details to every site they play on. Worse, card companies - particularly those outside the UK - are increasingly refusing to deal with online gaming sites, claiming they carry a high risk of cancelled transactions.

Of course, using a cheque or a wire transfer is always a possibility if the only issue at stake is simply getting hold of your winnings, but if speed is what you are looking for these methods are no help at all - and transaction fees can also bite deep.

One potential solution is an "online wallet". Companies like Neteller, Firepay, Moneybookers and Click2Pay act as a conduit between you and the gaming sites - you pay money into or out of the wallet at will, and use it at whichever site you want to play at.

Just as an individual casino will let you set up a shared purse to move freely between its games, an online wallet can be used to flit between different casinos and poker rooms throughout the wider online gambling arena. And, when it's time to cash your chips in, some even offer their own debit cards so you can go straight down the cash machine to withdraw your winnings in satisfyingly real notes.

As a publicly listed company with $1bn capital, Neteller is the best established of these wallet providers. It offers easy and convenient withdrawal options, and has also launched a UK-specific debit card that gamblers can transfer their funds straight onto.

One experienced UK online poker player using Neteller is Mike French, who likes to vary his gaming between eight different sites. He signed up for a Neteller wallet partly through word-of-mouth recommendation and partly because he was impressed by its financial standing.

"You often find online that you can make a deposit using a credit card but not take money out with it," he says. "It just becomes a pain - so something like Neteller is a lot more convenient to use."