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Western Union Poker Sites

Western Union is not exactly synonymous with online poker, but you will find a few Western Union poker sites willing to pay out through the money transfer giant. You might say it the other way around: that Western Union is willing to send payments from certain online casinos and Internet poker rooms.

In fact, there are a lot more poker sites that accept payments from Western Union than you would think. A common miscommunication involving terms like “cash transfer” and “wire transfer” can often leave poker players with the impression Western Union isn’t an option, when it very well might be a preferred option for payment. I’ll discuss this in greater detail later, but let’s start with the basics.

What Is Western Union?

Western Union is a $5 billion company which was founded in 1851, and is now based in Colorado. Western Union handles financial services, as well as communications. Among the financial services offered are money orders, person-to-person cash transfers, and a host of other commercial services. Western Union claims to have over 400,000 agent locations worldwide, in over 240 countries and territories. (I’m assuming that’s a significant number of “territories”, since there are only around 195 nations by most accounts.) Whatever the case, you name a country and Western Union is likely to have an office there.

Western Union is the world’s most popular payment processor. They have offices located around the world, and they’re conveniently located as well. With Western Union poker deposits, it’s all about convenience, and they have made the whole process very easy for you.

All you have to do is to visit one of the many poker sites who accept Western Union as a deposit method. Then while you’re at your poker room of choice, you get their details as far as what will be needed to provide to Western Union to make this all happen seamlessly, and then visit your local Western Union branch.

You then give them your cash, and they get your money right in the poker site of your choice for you. Using Western Union may be an outstanding choice for you and avoids the pitfalls and frustrations that exist in the world of depositing into online poker accounts.

What About Using Credit Cards for Online Poker Deposits?

Unless you have a credit card that can be used for online poker deposits, getting your money into poker rooms can be a difficult and frustrating experience. Maybe you don’t even have a credit card. Perhaps you do, but you live in a country where they don’t accept the credit card you use, or don’t accept any credit card deposits at all.

Even if you do use a credit card successfully, there’s always the possibility that your credit card company may deny payment to the poker room.

You’re then left holding the bag, and they will then deduct the amount of your deposit from your poker account there, that is if you have enough money left in it to pay your debt. Otherwise, you owe them this money, and will have to make arrangements to pay it off. However, you’re having enough trouble just getting a deposit in there in the first place, and they’ve taken away your means of doing so.

If you did manage to make a profit, having your deposit taken away from you will likely have your account crippled. You don’t even have enough money left to play anymore, and you may not even be able to take it out. Even if all the withdrawal options are available to you, there is a minimum withdrawal amount that applies to all of them, and you’re not even close to it.

There might not even be a withdrawal option there that you can even use, even if you had enough in there to take out. So your hard earned poker winnings will then have to sit there and rot. But some poker sites will spare you from that, as they may assess an inactive account charge, which will end up putting your orphaned funds out of their misery by eating them up.

What About Using Internet Wallets for Poker Deposits?

So now you’re thinking that maybe you can use an Internet wallet instead. So you begin the long process of jumping through hoops and verifying your account and such, and a week or two can pass before you even start the process of sending money over to them. Then another week or so, or more, can pass while you’re waiting for them to arrange the transfer from your bank.

Then, you find out that the poker room or rooms you want to play at take deposits from the Internet wallet you’ve chosen, but don’t take this particular one due to the country you live in, and may not take any Internet wallet deposits from you at all, regardless of which one you choose.

So now what are you going to do?

For one thing, you’re going to have to wait for your money to be sent back to your bank account, which will generally take another week or more. So it’s now 3 or 4 weeks later, and you’re right back where you started, and are still wanting to start playing poker at your chosen poker room, but in spite of all the time and effort you’ve wasted trying to do so, you’re no further ahead at all and are now out of ideas.

If you try another Internet wallet, the whole thing may happen again, and you’ll end up pulling your hair out as you just grow old waiting to finally play some poker.

What About Prepaid Credit Cards?

Perhaps someone told you that you could use a prepaid credit card to deposit. There are a number of them out there, and some poker rooms do take them, perhaps not the ones you want to play at though. The real problem here is that most don’t work anywhere for poker deposits. Some do, but even the poker rooms themselves aren’t sure which ones.

And they aren’t any help in providing you with any real guidance. They’ve never heard of these prepaid cards and have no idea about them, and just tell you to try them and see. It’s actually up to the owner of these cards to decide whether they can be used for poker or not, and they aren’t telling you anything either. So you search around for one, buy it, give it a try, and then find out that it doesn’t work at your poker site of choice.

Perhaps you find a poker room that it does work at, but you really didn’t want to play there in the first place, and perhaps the competition there is tougher than you were looking for. So now you’ve lost all your money because of all this nonsense. and you’re certainly not happy. You’ve now got to save up some more to try this again, which will take you who knows how long.

On the other hand, you may not even be able to find a poker room which will take a deposit from this particular prepaid credit card. Now, you’ve got to take it back and look to get a refund, and who knows how long that will take or how difficult it will be.

Then, once again, you’re back to square one, and are out of ideas.

Is There Even One Good Option Out There for Poker Deposits?

Countless players have been very frustrated by this process, as you might imagine. The poker sites themselves aren’t going to tell you all this, or tell you very much at all in fact. You can’t really blame them though, as they don’t want to paint dark pictures of how difficult it can be to deposit with them.

It’s true that people in certain countries can deposit with no problem at all, even with the very methods that are giving you trouble. Knowing this does not do you any good though.

They will end up telling you to blame your government, and it’s true that it’s governments that are at the root of all this trouble. However, given the reality of all of this, you do need someone to point you in the right direction to avoid all the anger and expense that you may easily run into without the proper guidance.

There is indeed a good option for you out there, a very good option in fact, and that option is Western Union poker deposits.

Western Union Will Take You Away from All this Frustration

So now that you know all the pitfalls that you can run into with other online poker deposit methods, it’s especially refreshing to know that a great option such as what Western Union is ready to provide you now exists. Given the way things have been for years, it’s no wonder why so many online poker players consider Western Union to be a Godsend.

Western Union has been the leader in transferring money for a very long time, long before the Internet, long before bank cards, credit cards, or any thing else besides cash. In fact they have been satisfying customers back when the horse and buggy was the only mode of travel, and people lit their homes with kerosene lamps.

So with all this experience, they really know what they are doing, and now that they have finally provided their services to the online poker industry, all is well now. By the way, I mentioned some of the frustrations that can occur with looking to withdraw money, that’s a whole different story, and is actually quite a bit worse than depositing.

Often, the only way to get your money is to wait for a check to come in the mail, which somehow can take a whole month or longer to arrive. When it does finally come, you now have to hope that the government doesn’t seize it, as they often will if they can trace it back to an online poker deal. This has already happened more than once and people have not only been out their money, but have also been found out by the authorities.

On the other hand, perhaps the best thing about using Western Union is that you can get your withdrawals sent right to their office, where you just go in, show ID, and pick up the cash.

Does it get any easier than this?

As I’ve said, with Western Union, it’s all about being very easy, as well as completely reliable.

So How Do You Get Started Using Western Union to Play Online Poker?

All of this discussion wouldn’t serve any purpose unless we are ready to tell you which poker sites accept Western Union for poker deposits. We’re not only about to do that for you, we’re going to give you the list of the best poker rooms to use Western Union at.

You’ve done the hard part, which is reading this article. The final step will be much easier, which just involves using your mouse to click on a link below to one of our recommended poker rooms and start your journey toward hassle free online poker.