What Is a Credit Card Casino?
A credit card casino is an online casino that accepts Visa or Mastercard credit cards for deposits and, sometimes, withdrawals. For UK players in 2026 the term specifically means an international, non-UKGC casino — because UK-licensed sites are no longer allowed to take credit cards at all. The casinos on this page are licensed offshore, most commonly under Curaçao or the newer Anjouan authority, which is why they can still process a card payment a UK site has to refuse.
The 2020 Credit Card Ban, Explained
On 14 April 2020 the UK Gambling Commission banned credit-card gambling at every site holding a UK licence — online casino, betting and bingo. The reasoning was straightforward: too many people were gambling with money they did not have, and a credit card made that easy. The ban was a consumer-protection measure that applies only to UK-licensed operators.
Casinos licensed elsewhere were never inside that rule's scope — which is the whole reason credit card casinos for UK players still exist and keep launching. An operator regulated in Curaçao or Anjouan is not bound by a UKGC rule, so it can accept your card while a UK site cannot. The trade-off is that the UK's strong consumer protections and dispute-resolution route do not apply, so more of the diligence falls on you.