British players pushed online Gross Gambling Yield to £1.55 billion in the first quarter of 2026 alone — a 7% jump year-on-year, with slots doing most of the heavy lifting. Across licensed UK operators, that volume moved through roughly 13.4 million average monthly active accounts.
That’s the size of the prize. It’s also the size of the compliance problem.
Every one of those deposits has to clear a payment stack most standard processors were never built for: a credit card ban that’s been in force since April 2020, a financial risk assessment (FRA) regime that went fully live in February 2026, and a Remote Gaming Duty that now sits at 40%. Get the gateway wrong and an operator isn’t just losing a few points of approval rate — they’re one compliance gap away from a licence review.
This guide breaks down how a gambling payment gateway UK operators can actually rely on is built, what the UK Gambling Commission expects from the payment layer specifically, and what separates a processor that understands iGaming from one that’s simply bolted “high risk” onto a generic checkout.
What Is a Gambling Payment Gateway, and Why Isn’t a Normal One Enough?
A gambling payment gateway is the infrastructure layer that authorises, routes, and settles funds between a player and an online casino or sportsbook — in both directions. That two-way flow is the first thing that separates it from standard e-commerce: a payment gateway for gambling has to handle player deposits and player withdrawals, often back to the same instrument, under rules that don’t touch a normal online store.
Behind the scenes, gambling operators are coded under Merchant Category Code 7995 (betting and wagering), which most consumer-facing issuing banks treat with caution — some block it outright. A generic payment processor without dedicated gambling underwriting and acquiring relationships will see a meaningful share of legitimate transactions declined before a player ever reaches the cashier, not because of fraud, but simply because of how the transaction is coded.
That’s the gap a specialist offering gambling payment gateway integration services is meant to close: acquiring relationships actually configured to accept MCC 7995 traffic, routing logic that shops a transaction across multiple acquirers when one declines it, and underwriting teams who understand what a licensed operator’s business genuinely looks like.
The UK Rulebook: Why Payment Processing for Gambling Means Something Different Here
Three UK-specific rules shape almost everything about how a payment gateway for a gambling site has to be built.
No credit cards, full stop. Since 14 April 2020, UK Gambling Commission rules have banned credit cards as a funding method for gambling, across both remote and non-remote operators. A UK-facing gateway that still routes credit card gambling deposits isn’t cutting corners — it’s non-compliant. Debit cards, e-wallets, and open banking now carry the volume credit used to.
Financial risk assessments are live. Phase 1 of the Commission’s FRA framework took effect in February 2026, triggering a frictionless, data-only affordability check once a player’s net losses cross roughly £150 over a rolling 30-day period. The Commission reports the large majority of accounts clear this check without any interruption to play, but the payment gateway still has to be able to pause, flag, or hold a transaction the instant that threshold is crossed — meaning the gateway and the operator’s risk engine need to talk to each other in real time, not overnight.
The cost of doing business has gone up. Remote Gaming Duty now sits at 40%, alongside statutory stake limits on online slots and a ban on mixed-product bonusing. None of that touches the payment gateway directly, but it raises the cost of every avoidable decline and every unnecessary chargeback — margin operators can no longer afford to leak.
A gambling payment gateway UK operators choose in 2026 has to be built around these three facts, not retrofitted to them.
How Deposits and Withdrawals Actually Move
Deposits: a player selects a method, authenticates — usually via 3D Secure 2.0, effectively mandatory under PSD2’s Strong Customer Authentication rules for card payments — and funds land in the gaming balance the moment authorisation clears.
Withdrawals: card withdrawals generally have to return to the same card that funded the account, the “same-source” principle most UK-licensed operators build their payout logic around. Bank transfer and open banking withdrawals give operators a route for amounts or player profiles where the same-source rule isn’t practical.
Player fund segregation: licence conditions at certain protection levels expect player balances to be held separately from the operator’s own working capital. That’s a settlement-account architecture decision, not a box to tick after launch, and it needs building into the gateway from day one.
Payment Methods UK Players Actually Use in 2026
- Debit cards — still the default deposit method for most UK players, and the primary card rail since the credit card ban.
- Open banking and bank transfer — growing quickly because it carries no card-network chargeback risk, and UK open banking rails are mature enough to make account-to-account deposits genuinely instant.
- E-wallets (PayPal, Skrill, Neteller) — popular because they insert a buffer between a player’s bank account and the casino, and disputes route to the wallet provider first.
- Cryptocurrency — a smaller but real slice of volume, chosen mainly because crypto transactions are irreversible by design, removing chargeback exposure entirely for that share of deposits — at the cost of heightened AML monitoring obligations on the processor’s side.
The right payment gateway for an online gambling business doesn’t pick one of these — it supports the mix a specific operator’s player base actually wants, with routing that favours whichever method clears fastest for a given player profile.
Chargebacks: The Cost Gambling Payment Processing Was Built Around
Chargebacks hit gambling harder than almost any other vertical, and the driver usually isn’t fraud in the traditional sense — it’s dispute behaviour. A player deposits, gambles, loses, and later disputes the transaction as unauthorised. The industry calls this friendly fraud, and it’s the single biggest chargeback category gambling payment processors contend with.
What actually moves the needle on dispute outcomes:
- 3D Secure 2.0 on every card deposit — authentication records are among the strongest evidence in a dispute representment.
- Full session logging — IP address, device fingerprint, login timestamps, and the gameplay sequence between deposit and dispute filing.
- Clear, accepted terms at checkout — a documented bonus and deposit policy weakens a “terms weren’t clear” dispute before it’s even filed.
- A recognisable billing descriptor — a statement line a player identifies instantly cuts down on “I don’t recognise this charge” disputes before they escalate.
None of this eliminates chargebacks entirely. It’s what separates a gambling merchant payment processing setup that can absorb dispute volume from one that can’t.
What to Actually Check Before You Sign With a Gambling Payment Gateway Provider
Not every “high risk payment gateway” pitch is built for gambling specifically. Before committing, confirm:
- Gambling licence experience in your jurisdiction. MGA, UKGC, and Gibraltar licences each carry different underwriting expectations — your processor should already run live portfolios in your licence’s jurisdiction, not be learning it on your account.
- MCC 7995 routing, not generic high-risk routing. Ask specifically how the provider routes gambling-coded transactions, and across how many acquirers.
- Both sides of the flow. Confirm the provider actually handles withdrawals — same-source logic, KYC-gated payout, withdrawal limits — not deposits alone.
- Real-time dispute tooling. Chargeback alerts and pre-dispute notifications matter more here than in almost any other vertical.
- Multi-currency and settlement terms. If you’re serving players outside the UK too, confirm FX spread and settlement speed before signing, not after the first statement.
Where WebPays Fits Into a UK Gambling Payment Stack
WebPays works specifically across high-risk verticals — iGaming and online gambling among them — with acquiring relationships built around MCC-coded gambling traffic rather than generic e-commerce routing. For UK-facing and international operators, that means multi-acquirer card routing designed to reduce unnecessary MCC-based declines, support for debit card, e-wallet, open banking, and cryptocurrency deposit rails, and settlement and reporting structures built to support player-fund segregation requirements.
Underwriting starts with your gambling licence and jurisdiction coverage, in line with how any UK-facing processor is expected to onboard operators. No processor — WebPays included — can promise a specific approval rate; what a specialist gateway can promise is that transactions are routed by people who understand why gambling MCCs get declined in the first place, and infrastructure built around fixing that.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use a credit card to deposit at a UK online casino?
No. UK Gambling Commission rules have prohibited credit card funding for gambling since 14 April 2020, across all UK-licensed operators. Debit cards, e-wallets, open banking, and in some cases cryptocurrency are the available deposit methods.
What’s the difference between a gambling merchant account and a gambling payment gateway?
A merchant account is the underlying facility that lets a licensed gambling business accept card payments; the payment gateway is the technology layer that securely transmits and routes those transactions between the player, the operator’s platform, and the acquiring infrastructure. Most operators need both, and many providers offer them as a combined package.
Do UK financial risk assessments affect how a payment gateway is built?
Yes. Since Phase 1 went live in February 2026, licensed operators must run frictionless, data-based checks once a player’s net losses cross roughly £150 in a rolling 30-day period. The payment gateway and the operator’s risk engine need to communicate in real time so deposits can be paused or flagged the moment that threshold is reached.
Why do gambling businesses get declined by standard payment processors?
Mostly because of Merchant Category Code classification, not fraud risk on individual transactions. Gambling is coded under MCC 7995, and many issuing banks and payment processors decline that MCC by default or simply don’t maintain the acquiring relationships needed to process it reliably.
Are cryptocurrency deposits a good fit for a gambling payment gateway UK operators use?
For eligible operators, yes — crypto deposits are irreversible, which eliminates chargeback risk for that portion of volume, and a growing minority of UK players use it. It comes with heightened AML and blockchain-monitoring obligations that need to sit with the processor, not the operator alone.
How long does gambling payment gateway integration usually take?
It depends on the provider’s API maturity, the operator’s platform setup, and how much licensing and underwriting documentation is ready upfront. Operators who arrive with licence documentation, banking history, and compliance policies already in order integrate significantly faster than those starting from scratch.