Earlier today, I went to the Internet site of my bank and made a transfer of funds from my checking account to my savings account. It took about one minute to do this and it got me to wondering why a similar system can't be set up by online casinos. I fully understand that transferring $$$ between accounts at a bank is a lot different than transferring $$$ between two different businesses, but the first casino company that figures out how to do it will have a hard time handling the business they'll get.

Since all transfers at some point must culminate in an actual exchange of currency, the problems are many but it's worth finding an answer. Players dream of a system where they or a third party will pull the $$$ from the casino account, if there are $$$ to be pulled. Instantly. No more 'audits', check in the mail BS, or other excuses to delay things. At the same time, players would likely be willing to pay $2 or $3 for this convenience but even more importantly, many people who either don't have credit cards or those who are afraid they'll never see their $$$ again will be able to participate in the great sport of online gambling with a large degree of confidence. There will always be some concern about "rigged" games, but if one's hard-earned cash can be deposited and withdrawn by a few mouse-clicks, I predict the industry will see a huge influx of new players. What I envision is some sort of "clearing house" like that used in the commodity futures markets. At the end of the day, the clearing house is the seller to all buyers and the buyer to all sellers. So, even if a seller cannot fulfill his contract, the clearing house guarantees that the buyer will be satisfied. Wouldn't it be great to know that the $100 you have on deposit at "XYZ" Casino could be withdrawn right now and either credited to your bank account or to another casino account in just minutes?

However, that will come at a price to those under-funded casinos that rely on the 'float' to keep their operation above water. Almost every day, I read about a casino or group of casinos that ran a great promotion but are now being very slow to pay their customers. It's obvious that they came up with the promotion to attract new deposits and then hoped that the players would lose enough to offset the casino's cost before they had to cut checks for the winners. That was the case with Player's Fortune Casino which set off the boycott against Gamblingsoftware.com-powered casinos and it may well be the case with a group of casinos owned or managed by the Tropika group, since they are evidently not paying promptly. Attracting deposits with a "damn the cost" attitude is a dangerous game now that the players are getting smarter. Tactics like that may have worked a year ago, but today's player isn't going to blow a 25% deposit bonus by playing some game with a 15% house edge. Many casino operators are discovering this only now, so there will undoubtedly be more disasters like it in the future.

So, the Internet casino industry is between a rock and a hard place. It can definitely get more people to play by offering guaranteed transfers of cash with little or no delay, but it won't be able to play the little 'games' like audits, or, "gosh, that check was supposed to go out on Tuesday" and other such nonsense. Since the beginning, online casinos have tried to emulate the experience of 'real' casinos and I support that completely, but it has to work both ways. I walk into my local brick-and-mortar casino with cash in my pocket and if I win, I walk away with cash in my pocket. The day that the Internet casino industry begins to offer that same ability will be the day they are truly a part of the gambling business. There's an entire world out there waiting for that to happen.

-the GameMaster