Online gambling becomes more and more popular all around the world due to a bunch of reasons. These include a more transparent and safe industry, a variety of games and entertainment, attractive bonuses that are unavailable at land-based houses, innovative technologies, outstanding designs, etc. The industry is so promising for businesses that companies put lots of effort into making the niche more transparent and legit.
Canada is one of the countries that have long been among the most online friendly places for gamblers. However, there are still many nuances that players should consider even when playing online games in Canada. This is why it is important to be able to choose the best paying online casinos and to keep the local laws in mind. So, how to play legally?
Province Laws
The very first aspect that should be taken into consideration is the local laws in each separately taken province. While Canada as a country allows online gambling as such, every province has its own laws regarding offline and online gambling. As a result, every particular gambler may face really different rules considering many gambling aspects, depending on where the gambler is located.
A bright example of this situation is Ontario when compared to other Canadian provinces. Until recently, Ontario, just like other provinces, allows online gaming from abroad to offer their services to local residents, but local operators could not run online games (only offline ones). Online platforms were barely regulated, no proper taxes were paid by the businesses, and the players’ customer rights were not protected.
Yet, starting from April 2022, Ontario is the first Canadian province that made a new step in the online gambling industry development and opened a regulated market for online games and sports betting services by local operators. All local residents 19 years old and older can legally enjoy games and sports bets on many different platforms instead of one monopolist.
At the same time, other provinces of Canada are far from having a transparent and well-regulated market for online games run by local operators and have somewhat different rules for other gambling options on the Internet. As a result, to gamble legally, one is ought to know the province’s laws.
Choosing Reliable Online Casinos
Besides being aware of the current laws in each taken province, the gambler in Canada should be generally aware of the features and characteristics of legal sites. While Ontario already regulates its operators and a registered operator is automatically legal for Ontario, other provinces still allow access to offshore betting sites, and it is the players’ responsibility to check if those platforms are trustworthy enough.
To recognize a legal site and tell it from a potentially unsafe or illegal site, a few things should be explored and objectively evaluated:
- license held by the site – the license badge should be linked to the actual document on the licensing body’s site, and the license number should be indicated by the platform
- certificates about software testing, like the ones by eCOGRA or similar
- legal information about the operator/owner of the site should be provided in full
- any additional seals of trust, industry awards, etc.
- a healthy number of banking options by reliable partners
Checking those things takes time, but the player will be sure they trust their data and their money to a decent platform.
Choosing the Right Payment Methods
Overall, if the player follows the province laws, and chooses a reliable betting site following all the rules, high chance they will end up making real money bets with a high-quality platform. However, there is one more aspect to remember, and this is payments.
While Canada has enough payment methods that are legally available in the country and are online friendly, some offshore platforms offer deposit and withdrawal options for cryptocurrency payments. Canada does not prevent its residents from paying online in crypto coins and does not block the e-wallets, but offshore platforms can use this payment option for not really fair manipulations with the customers’ finance. So, it is highly recommended to double-check payment options and rules if cryptocurrency is involved.
