Positive Changes For Online Gambling Payments And Advertising

Two major developments on the online gambling payment processing and advertising fronts are a clear indication that attitudes towards legal online gambling are changing in the US.

That’s good news for an industry that has spent the last half-decade educating policymakers, banks, and online advertisers about the legal US online casino and gaming industry.

It’s also interesting (in a positive way) that these changes are happening despite the Department of Justice throwing a bucket of confusion confetti over the entire industry with its 2018 Wire Act opinion.

Online Gambling Payment Processing Gets a Big Boost

One nugget of information dropped during one of last week’s G2E panels was the news that American Express has started processing legal online gambling payments in New Jersey.

Betting USA was able to confirm that not only is American Express engaged in a pilot program with Caesars online casino, but Discover has also started processing legal online gambling transactions industry-wide.

That’s a big win for an industry that has struggled with processing gambling deposits and withdrawals since its 2013 launch.

With the addition of Discover, American Express, and PayPal (in December 2017), there are only a couple of key holdouts in the legal US online gambling market – I’m looking at you Chase and CitiBank.

It will be interesting to see how long they continue to hold out given their competitors’ recent change of heart and the growing number of states with legal online gambling. It was easy to say “no” when only 3-5% of the US population had access to legal online gambling, but as the percentage continues to increase, it may be too big of a market to ignore.

Google Relaxes Online Gambling Advertising Restrictions

Google has expanded a beta program launched earlier this year that allows sports betting advertisements in legal US jurisdictions, according to Gambling Compliance. Google also now allows users to opt-out of YouTube gambling ads.

The program started in June with New Jersey, Nevada, and West Virginia. Google added Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania to the list of approved states this month. The program is still in beta-testing.

According to iGaming Business, in addition to allowing Google-certified online gambling operators to advertise their real-money-online-gambling products:

“Google certification will also enable operators to advertise sites that contain or link to content relating to online gambling. These include promotional products such as bonus codes, as well as educational materials like tutorials or e-books, software including poker odds calculators, other gambling-related information, and aggregator or affiliate sites that promote gambling-related content.”