Bovada, the best 18 and up online casino, leads the gambling industry when it comes to top-rated casino games, tournament poker, and live dealer options. In true Bodog fashion, Bovada constantly pushes the boundaries on innovative gambling features.
One of those features we covered recently was the MatchPay online gambling banking option.
MatchPay, a person-to-person financial go-between that allowed any Bovada member to transfer all or a portion of their account balance to any other member using familiar money-transfer services, held a great deal of promise.
MatchPay services were viewed as instrumental to Bovada’s competitive edge over other trusted 18+ online international casinos, opening the door for players to fund their accounts through PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, and Cash App.
MatchPay wasn’t just one banking option, but four different options all wrapped neatly into one!
For online US gamblers, this was big news. Various US banking restrictions (i.e. the UIGEA) prevent offshore gambling sites from directly accepting the abovementioned deposit and withdrawal services from American players.
Obviously, there was a tremendous amount of hype around Bovada for providing this efficient, innovative MatchPay funding option.
But unfortunately, the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.
Yes, that’s right, folks: The MatchPay option is no longer available, as Bovada unceremoniously removed the service from their platform.
Bovada hasn’t disclosed exactly why this happened, but we can speculate.
One reason that Bovada has removed MatchPay may be to retool the service and reincorporate it in a more efficient way in the future. Hopefully, this is the case.
However, Bovada could be opting to push its own type of player-to-player transfers in the form of the Bovada Vouchers, which have suddenly become extremely popular at the site, second only to the Bitcoin deposit method. Player vouchers are similar to MatchPay, allowing for account-to-account transfers between members.
Yet another possible explanation could come from strange bedfellows PayPal and Venmo. These money-transfer goliaths may have objected to the MatchPay service, forcing Bovada to remove the option from its banking menu.
After all, PayPal has now launched its own cryptocurrency exchange, allowing account holders to purchase Bitcoin and altcoins directly from the PayPal app itself. Venmo is workshopping a similar crypto exchange feature on their application, as it is a subsidiary of PayPal.
For now, the PayPal app only lets members buy Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin, and Ethereum, and hold it in their accounts. However, we expect those restrictions to be lifted soon.
If so, this new approach might explain PayPal’s and Venmo’s unwillingness to support Bovada in an ancillary way. They may simply not want users going through third-party apps to initiate transfers that they themselves could support in the future.
Al that said, bettors shouldn’t worry, as the best 18 and up online casinos already support robust cryptocurrency banking options. Bovada, along with the rest of the top providers in the online gambling industry, already directly support Bitcoin and altcoin deposits.
And for newcomers who might be wary of the learning curve regarding cryptocurrency, Bovada, Café Casino, Ignition, and other sites already feature a fast and straightforward Zelle-to-Bitcoin option to streamline the process.
If you were counting on Bovada MatchPay to make rapid same-day deposits and claim same-day payouts for all your online gambling, it’s important to remember that there are plenty of other options that are just as compelling.
And, of course, MatchPay could make a comeback – or be replaced by something even better – in the near future!