Licence condition 6.1.2 · in force since 14 April 2020
No casino licensed by the UK Gambling Commission has been permitted to accept a credit card since 14 April 2020. The prohibition covers deposits made directly with the card and deposits routed through a wallet the operator knows is credit-funded. For a player in the UK the working options are a debit card, a debit-funded wallet, or a transfer from a bank account.
This page sets out what the rule covers and which methods a UK cashier will actually clear. The operators listed further down are not licensed in Great Britain, so the rule does not apply to them — and neither do the protections that come with a licence.
Licence condition 6.1.2 — the credit card prohibition this page explains — binds Gambling Commission licensees. It does not reach these operators.
Neither do the protections a licence brings: GAMSTOP self-exclusion, mandatory deposit limits and the complaints and dispute-resolution route are all unavailable. Check any operator against the Commission's public register before depositing.
Supplied order · not a ranking
Every entry carries the same locked field: none of these operators holds a Gambling Commission licence, so the credit card condition set out on this page does not bind them. The remaining fields are filled only where the operator has supplied or published the value; empty fields are left out rather than guessed.
Locked fieldNot licensed in Great Britain — licence condition 6.1.2 does not reach any entry in this list
GB licenceNone held
GB licenceNone held
GB licenceNone held
GB licenceNone held
GB licenceNone held
GB licenceNone held
GB licenceNone held
GB licenceNone held
Dashed fields are data slots. They are populated from the approved brand dataset and removed from the record if no approved value exists.
Each record below holds the editorial note, the game mix shown in the lobby, and the fields that will carry approved values. None of these operators is licensed in Great Britain. Nothing here is inferred from a screenshot or a press page.
This operator holds no Gambling Commission licence, so none of the cashier behaviour described above is guaranteed here: the credit card condition does not bind it, and a refusal or an acceptance tells you nothing about compliance with British rules. The cashier list, minimum amounts and processing windows will be published once the operator confirms them.
The note for this entry will cover the wallet options offered at the cashier and whether withdrawals are returned to the depositing method. Both are useful to a player who has just had a credit card declined and is choosing a replacement.
Longer records get a second paragraph where there is something worth saying: an unusual verification step, a cashier that separates deposit and withdrawal methods, or a documented limit on how much can be moved in a single transaction.
Where none of that applies, the record stays short. A uniform paragraph length across every operator would only signal that the same sentence had been rewritten eight times.
A live-dealer heavy lobby does not change the payment rules, but it does change what a player is likely to ask about: table minimums, session limits and how quickly a withdrawal can be requested mid-session.
Short record. Until the operator supplies its payments page, the only statement that can be made with confidence is the one in the locked field above: there is no Great Britain licence behind this entry.
Crash and instant-round games settle in seconds, so the deposit method matters more here than elsewhere: a player who has to leave the cashier to top up a wallet loses the session rhythm. The record will note which methods post instantly once confirmed.
Where a lobby leans on jackpot titles the deposit question shifts from speed to ceilings: the maximum a cashier will take in one transaction, and whether that ceiling moves once identity checks are complete. Both figures go in the record when the operator publishes them.
The last entry is held to the same standard as the first. Until a payments page or an approved dataset entry exists, the only field that can be filled here is the locked one — and it records an absence, not a permission.
Five working rules, applied to every entry.
Regulatory facts are separated from operator facts.The credit card position comes from the licence condition and applies identically to every licensee. It is never presented as a feature one operator chose.
Operator fields come from supplied data only.Licence numbers, accepted cards, minimums and processing windows are taken from the approved dataset or the operator’s published payments page.
Missing values are dropped, not filled.A record with three confirmed fields shows three fields. There is no invented number standing in for one nobody has verified.
The order is supplied, not earned.Entries appear in the order given for this project. No score, star rating or league position is attached to that order.
Nothing here is a first-hand test.No deposit was attempted at any listed operator. Where a claim needs evidence, the source is the regulator’s own material.
LCCP 6.1.2 · announced 14 Jan 2020 · in force 14 Apr 2020
The Gambling Commission did not ban credit card gambling with a new Act of Parliament. It added a condition to the Licence Conditions and Codes of Practice, the rulebook attached to every operating licence it issues. Condition 6.1.2, headed Use of credit cards, was announced on 14 January 2020 and took effect three months later. Because it is a licence condition rather than guidance, breaking it is breaking the licence, and the Commission can act against the operator directly.
The scope is wide. It covers all remote gambling — casino, slots, bingo, betting and lotteries — and betting in premises. The single carve-out is a lottery ticket paid for face to face. It also reaches the indirect route: an operator must not accept money from a wallet or intermediary it knows is being funded by a credit card, which is why topping up a wallet from a credit card and pushing that balance into a casino account does not work either.
If a deposit fails, the refusal usually happens at the cashier rather than at your bank. Operators read the card type from the opening digits of the card number, so a credit card is identified and rejected before the payment is ever presented to the issuer. A declined deposit of that kind is the rule working as intended, not a fault with the card.
The reasoning behind the condition was set out in the Commission’s own research. Around 800,000 people in Great Britain were using credit cards to gamble, and 22% of online gamblers who did so were classed as problem gamblers. The regulator’s position was blunt: consumers should not gamble with money they do not have.
Follow-up research looked at whether the ban simply pushed people elsewhere. Most reported switching to a debit card. A smaller group described indirect routes that the condition does not reach — transferring from a credit account into a current account, or taking cash out on the card first. Those routes are legal, but a cash advance is usually charged as one, with a fee and interest from the day it is taken, which makes it a considerably worse deal than the card purchase it replaces.
What remains is straightforward. A UK player funds an account from money already held: a debit card, a bank transfer, a wallet fed by a debit card, or a prepaid voucher. Any site still offering a credit card option to a UK customer is not doing so under a Commission licence, and the consumer protections that come with that licence — deposit limits, GAMSTOP self-exclusion, complaint routes — do not apply there.
UK cards print the type on the face: Debit or Credit. A Visa Debit and a Visa Credit look nearly identical at a glance and both carry the same scheme logo. If the card is credit, no amount of retrying will get it through a licensed cashier.
Debit card, bank transfer, open banking, or a wallet whose funding source is a debit card. Check the funding source inside the wallet app rather than assuming — a wallet with a credit card attached will be refused at the cashier for the same reason the card itself would be.
Licensed operators have to offer deposit limits and have to act on a request to reduce one. Setting the limit while you are still at the cashier takes a minute; setting it later, mid-session, is the point at which it is least likely to happen.
General guidance on how each method sits against the licence condition. Operator-specific availability belongs in the ledger above.
Permitted
Visa Debit or Debit Mastercard drawn on a current account. The default method at a UK cashier.
Permitted with a debit card
A container for a card, not a payment method of its own. Whatever card is selected in the wallet is the card the operator sees.
Permitted if debit-funded
Acceptable where the balance or the linked funding source is not a credit card. The condition follows the money back to its origin.
Permitted
A push payment authorised in your banking app. No card is involved, and the money leaves the account immediately.
Permitted, deposits only
Bought with cash or a debit card and spent down to zero. Deposits only — a withdrawal has to return by another route.
Prohibited — LC 6.1.2
Refused at the cashier of every Commission-licensed operator, directly or through any intermediary the operator knows is credit-funded.
Outside the rule, not advised
Not caught by the condition, because the money arrives as cash in a current account. It is also the most expensive way to fund an account.
Eight things people search for after a card is declined.
Not if it holds a Gambling Commission licence. The condition has been in force continuously since 14 April 2020 and applies to every licensee, online and in premises.
Available credit is irrelevant. The cashier identifies the card as a credit product from its number range and refuses it before your issuer is contacted.
No. The condition covers payments the operator knows are credit-funded, which includes a wallet balance topped up from a credit card. A wallet funded by a debit card or a bank account is fine.
No. The scheme logo does not decide it — the product type does. A debit card takes money already in the account and is accepted normally.
It is not operating under a UK licence for that transaction. Nothing that comes with a licence — deposit limits, GAMSTOP, the complaints and dispute route — is available to you there.
Only in person. Lotteries where payment is made face to face are the single carve-out from the ban; buying the same ticket online is covered by it.
That depends on the operator’s own processing window and on identity checks, so the answer sits in each record above rather than here. Most cashiers return funds to the method used for the deposit where they can.
Many UK banks offer a gambling block in their app that stops card payments to gambling merchants, separately from anything the operator does. It sits alongside deposit limits rather than replacing them.
Gambling with borrowed money is the specific risk the credit card condition was written to address. If a deposit is being funded by credit in any form, that is worth pausing on.
Deposit limits
Daily, weekly or monthly, set in the account before you play. Increases take effect after a cooling-off period.
GAMSTOP
One registration self-excludes you from every online operator licensed in Great Britain.
Bank gambling block
A switch in most UK banking apps that refuses card payments to gambling merchants.
Free confidential support
The National Gambling Helpline is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, on 0808 8020 133.
Regulatory statements are re-checked against the Commission’s published conditions. Operator fields are refreshed when the brand dataset changes; a field that loses its source is removed rather than carried forward. Changes are recorded against the date below.
