When you sign up to an online casino, you can generally claim some kind of guaranteed new player welcome bonus. Most people claim these bonuses, but what happens if you decide to forfeit your bonus after accepting it? Is it even possible to forfeit your bonus? Find out right here.
What are online casino bonuses?
There are two main types of online casino bonuses that you are likely to come across in 2022 at pretty much every fully licensed online casino. You have Free Spins Bonuses and Matching Deposit Bonuses, and when you open a new account, the initial sign-up bonus that you can take advantage of is more commonly referred to as the welcome bonus.
Free Spins Bonuses
A Free Spins Bonus is basically a certain number of Free Spins that are credited to your account, and they can be used on any of the selected slots. At some ontario casinos, for example, you can get 1 Free Spin for every $/€/£1.00 that you deposit, but only up to a certain amount.
For example, you may have to deposit at least $/€/£10.00 (or equivalent currency value) to unlock 10 Free Spins, and you may be able to claim up to 50 Free Spins, which means that you have deposited $/€/£50.00. Alternatively, you might be able to claim, for example, 10 Free Spins to try certain games AND a matching deposit bonus when signing up to an online casino. Each casino is different.
Matching deposit bonuses
A matching deposit bonus (also known as a match bonus) is a bonus that you receive when making a deposit, and the most common is a 100% matching deposit bonus. With this bonus, you can double up on your deposit. For example, if you receive a 100% matching deposit bonus worth up to $/€/£250, it means that the operator of that casino will match your deposit by up to $/€/£250.00. The minimum deposit amount required to claim this bonus might be $/€/£10.00 or $/€/£20.00. Different casinos will accept different forms of payment when you make this deposit.
Therefore, if you take full advantage of the offer and deposit the full $/€/£250.00, the casino operator will match your deposit Pound for Pound/Euro for Euro/Dollar for Dollar, and you will end up with $/€/£500.00 to play with (includes your initial $/€/£250.00 deposit + $/€/£250.00 in free bonus money). If you deposited just $/€/£20.00, then you would have $/€/£40.00 to play with, and so on.
Wagering requirements
When you claim an online casino bonus, wagering requirements are normally attached. They are otherwise known as playthrough requirements or, at some casino sites, they are called rollover requirements, and they are something you cannot avoid (much to the annoyance of most players).
You normally must wager anywhere from as little as 10x times the bonus amount up to around 70x times the bonus amount before it’s possible to withdraw any winnings you end up making from your bonus (+ you also generally need to wager the initial deposit amount too). If online casino bonuses didn’t come with wagering requirements, most players would simply withdraw their bonus money, and casinos would quickly go out of business this way.
What happens if I forfeit my bonus?
Some players get fed up with trying to complete the wagering requirements, and they decide to forfeit their bonus. If you do forfeit your bonus after claiming it, you will lose any remaining bonus money you have, and you should just be left with your initial deposit amount. If you don’t think you can be bothered to complete bonus wagering requirements, then it might just be a good idea to decline the bonus rather than accept it when it’s first offered to you.