The wait to gamble with money from a personal check has been whittled from days to minutes on GameTimeCasino.com, which now facilitates instant purchasing and redemption of checks.
The service is provided on the Costa Rican site through a partnership between GameTimeCasino and Certegy, a check processing company that spun off from Equifax on July 9.
Lance Cole, general manager of GameTimeCasino, said the system has been working smoothly since the beginning of its trial run in January.
"It works really well," he said. "You can play right away. A lot of these places, you write an e-check and they want to wait a week or a week and a half or two weeks for it to clear.
"With our system, they write the check and, if they're approved, it goes right into their account. They have chips automatically."
The check redemption service began a trial run with GameTimeCasino. The test period lasted 90 days and was renewed at its end. Cole said his company is Certegy's only online gambling client.
"They did a lot of investigating on us before they approved it," he said. "I think that's one of the reasons why they haven't brought anybody else in; they probably haven't been able to find anybody as good as us."
Cole said he thinks Certegy is holding off on accepting new Internet gaming clients because it is still analyzing the risk. Representatives from Certegy declined the opportunity to comment.
Thousands of people have taken advantage of the service since its implementation, Cole said. The check that is issued is from the user's regular checking account. On GameTimeCasino.com, the user is presented with a variety of payment options, including credit cards, PayPal, Equifax (Certegy) and NETeller. To use an instant check, the player clicks on the Equifax logo and is presented with directions. Cole said the process is more user-friendly than paying with a credit card because the user is playing
with his or her own money as opposed to borrowed money.
He said that paying by check prevents people from getting into "as much trouble as they could."
"They're limited to what they have as opposed to what they want to borrow," Cole said. "Some people have problems with that. We're just in there for the little guy, so to speak."