If you live in China and want to play at an online casino, this may easily be the best deposit method available to you, bar none. UnionPay deposits are fast, reliable, and secure, which is basically everything you could want in a transaction system. It’s also very easy and convenient to use. There are no special accounts you’ll need to sign up for; just pull out your card, type in the information, and you’re good to go.
The prepaid versions of the card may also be advantageous, even for international users. It is well-known that both Visa and MasterCard-branded credit and debit cards have varying acceptance rates that can change based on the site you are trying to deposit at and the particular bank that issued each product. If your card doesn’t seem to be working at the sites you want to play on, you might find better luck with prepaid options.
That said, there are a couple drawbacks to this option. First, the number of casinos accepting this particular card brand is still rather low. This isn’t all that surprising, as the brand isn’t known well at all outside of its Chinese customer base (which, admittedly, is quite a large one). This is less of a drawback there, since sites that promote themselves to this market are certainly among those most likely to take payments this way.
Another issue is a relatively low maximum deposit at many sites. We’re not entirely sure why the maximums are fairly low from many operators, but we suspect it may be meant to keep transactions under the radar a bit. UnionPay has been cited as a major factor in currency leaving mainland China, particularly through the gaming industry (though this is mostly land-based, with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of yuan reportedly illegally being taken off of cards in Macau alone). That means that high rollers may have to look for other methods to use should they want to play for bigger stakes. In addition, this is only a deposit method – you’ll need another option for cash outs.
