Skrill, Neteller and AstroPay for Gambling

Where e-wallets stand with the law

The e-wallets themselves are ordinary licensed payment services. What decides whether you can use one to gamble is the gambling law where you are, not the wallet. In Singapore, gambling activities are prohibited unless they are exempted or licensed⁸. The legalized forms are social gambling, betting with Singapore Pools, casino gambling at Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa, and jackpot machine play in private clubs¹⁰. The Remote Gambling Act goes further and criminalizes the whole spectrum of remote gambling, from individual gamblers to people who facilitate or provide remote gambling services¹¹.

In South Korea, the authorities list internet gambling, hwatu (flower cards), poker and adult game rooms as illegal gambling¹². So a South Korean player who sees Skrill or Neteller listed at an offshore casino is looking at a site that is not legal for them to use, whatever the cashier page says. The same logic applies across the region: an e-wallet being available at a site tells you nothing about whether that site is lawful where you live. If you want the country-by-country picture, see our gambling payments overview and the country guides it links to.

Where you actually see Skrill and Neteller

Skrill and Neteller are the two international e-wallets you meet most often at offshore gambling sites serving Asia. Skrill offers fast deposits and withdrawals and supports a wide range of currencies, including JPY, which matters for Japanese players who want to avoid converting to US dollars before they bet¹.

Where you see them depends on which country a site targets:

• South Korea: guides to offshore casinos accepting South Koreans list PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, Dogecoin, Visa Debit, Mastercard and bank transfers among the payment methods².
• India: Parimatch lists UPI, PhonePe, Paytm, Net Banking, IMPS, Visa, Mastercard, Skrill, Neteller and cryptocurrency (Bitcoin and USDT) for Indian players⁴.
• Philippines: GG.BET tells Philippine players they can select from Neteller, Skrill, Paysafecard and ecoPayz, or stick with classic options like wire transfers and credit or debit cards³.
• Global brands: Betway's casino lists PayPal, Neteller, Skrill and credit or debit card among its deposit methods¹³.

The pattern is consistent: international e-wallets sit alongside cards, bank transfers and crypto at offshore sites, and the mix shifts by country. For how these compare with domestic wallets like GCash, MoMo and PayPay, see our page on local e-wallets and gambling.

What e-wallets cost

Fees come from three places: the wallet itself, the gambling operator, and any currency conversion along the way. On the operator side, the news is often good. GG.BET states plainly that it does not charge any extra fees or commissions on transactions³, and guides to offshore casinos serving Vietnamese players note that no entry fees are charged and access is free⁵. That covers the operator's cut, but not the wallet's own charges for loading, converting or withdrawing, which you need to check in the wallet's fee page for your country and currency.

Japan's legal betting products show what a transparent fee structure looks like. When you have sports lottery winnings over JPY 500,000 transferred to a bank account, the fee is JPY 154 including tax at ordinary banks, or JPY 50 including tax at Japan Post Bank, deducted from the winnings¹⁴. The same JPY 154 and JPY 50 figures apply to DUNK sports lottery transfers¹⁵. Boat race betting works similarly: with the 勝舟 voting service, you may bear deposit and settlement fees depending on your financial institution¹⁶. These are small, published numbers, which is more than most offshore cashier pages offer.

Currency conversion is the fee that hides. If your wallet holds one currency and the site bills in another, someone pays the spread. Our page on currency conversion on gambling payments covers exchange rates and FX fees in detail.

AstroPay and regional alternatives

AstroPay is the e-wallet most often mentioned alongside Skrill and Neteller for Asian and Latin American players, and it typically appears at the same offshore casinos. The regional picture, though, is dominated by domestic systems rather than international wallets. In India, the real workhorses are UPI, PhonePe, Paytm, Net Banking and IMPS, with Skrill and Neteller as secondary options and cryptocurrency alongside them⁴. In the Philippines, ecoPayz and Paysafecard sit next to Neteller and Skrill at offshore sites³.

The practical split is this: international e-wallets serve offshore sites, while domestic wallets and instant bank transfer systems serve both licensed local betting and, where tolerated, offshore ones. If you are weighing a domestic instant transfer against an e-wallet, our comparisons of UPI vs crypto deposits for Indian players, GCash vs crypto for Philippine players and DuitNow vs e-wallets for Malaysian players go through the trade-offs.

Legal betting runs on local payments

Where gambling is licensed and regulated, the payment rails are local, and international e-wallets are simply not part of the picture. Singapore Pools, the exempt operator for lottery and sports betting in Singapore, accepts only cash and NETS at its betting branches⁹. No Skrill, no Neteller, no cards.

Japan's keirin (cycle racing) betting is the clearest example of a fully domestic system. To bet online, you open a bank account used for ticket purchases and payout collection, complete member registration, deposit money for betting into a dedicated account, and then buy tickets on the voting screen¹⁸. Telephone and internet voting membership itself is free, though you bear your own internet connection charges and any phone charges to the voting center¹⁹. The KEIRIN official points program has no admission fee and no annual fee²⁰, points are awarded according to your betting amount (refunds and private-site bets are not included)²¹, and you cannot bet with the points themselves²². Everything runs through Japanese bank accounts, as our page on funding official betting accounts explains.

Keirin transfer fees: free up to 2 transfers per day, then JPY 75

Within the keirin net bank service, you move money from your ordinary bank account to the Japan National Keirin Association account before you can vote. These transfers are free up to twice per day for the time being; from the third transfer of the day, each one costs JPY 75⁶. The same terms appear across the service's bank-specific agreements, including the Japan Post Bank and Rakuten Bank versions⁷.

The fee is small but worth knowing before a race day when you might top up your balance several times. Two transfers a day covers most betting patterns, since you can load a full day's budget in one go. The daily purchase limits are generous by comparison.

What the transfer fee does not cover

The JPY 75 transfer fee is charged even if you do not vote after transferring, or if your vote cannot be accepted because of a natural disaster, a communication failure or another unavoidable reason⁷. In other words, the fee buys the transfer, not the bet. If a race is canceled before the fifth race and postponed to the next day, ticket purchases for the unheld races are canceled and the purchase money is refunded, but the transfer fee itself is not part of that refund⁷.

Separately, some licensed betting channels restrict how you can pay at all. Hong Kong's basketball betting license conditions do not accept credit card bets²⁵, a reminder that even where betting is legal, the payment method may be limited. Our page on credit card gambling bans covers where you cannot bet on credit across Asia.

Payment rules tightening in the Philippines and Singapore

Two markets are actively tightening the payment side of gambling. In the Philippines, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas opened a consultation in July 2025 on a draft circular limiting digital payment use for online gambling, including a daily transfer cap and a requirement for prior authority before payment services can be used for gambling. If finalized, this would directly affect e-wallet and bank transfer routes to offshore sites, not just licensed ones. Our page on Philippine central bank rules on casino payments tracks the detail.

In Singapore, the framework is already strict: gambling is prohibited unless exempted or licensed⁸, and the Gambling Regulatory Authority uses website blocking and payment transaction blocking, with major banks including DBS, UOB and OCBC mandated to block transactions to known gambling domains⁸. If a transfer to or from a gambling site is delayed or declined, this is one reason why; our page on pending casino withdrawals covers the others.

Cross-border transfer reporting in South Korea

South Korea is tightening the cross-border side too. In October 2024, the finance minister announced that virtual asset providers must register in advance and report cross-border transaction details to the Bank of Korea monthly, by late the following year. The stated aim is curbing financial crimes, but the effect for players is that moving money in and out of the country through crypto rails leaves a formal record.

This sits on top of an already strict baseline: internet gambling is listed as illegal gambling in South Korea²⁶, and the offshore casinos that accept South Korean players offer PayPal, Skrill, Neteller, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tether, Dogecoin and bank transfers². The payment methods being available does not change the legal position, and the new reporting rules make cross-border flows more visible to the authorities, not less.

Cryptocurrency deposits and withdrawals as an alternative

Crypto is the third rail alongside e-wallets and bank transfers at offshore sites. Offshore casinos serving South Koreans support bank transfers, e-wallets and crypto options such as Bitcoin or Ethereum², and Parimatch lists Bitcoin and USDT alongside its e-wallets for Indian players⁴. For players who cannot use international e-wallets at all, or whose banks block gambling transactions, crypto is often the remaining option.

It is not fee-free or simple. You need to buy the crypto, move it to the right network, and cash out again, each step with its own costs and failure modes. Our pages on how crypto deposits and withdrawals work, USDT and stablecoins for gambling and cashing out crypto winnings walk through the whole chain.

Fourth-party payment and payment agents

At the shady end of the market, "fourth-party payment" platforms handle deposits and withdrawals for online gambling websites, moving member funds through layers of intermediaries so the money does not look like gambling traffic²⁷. These services let members top up and withdraw their gambling money while keeping the operator's own hands off the transactions, which is part of why payments through them can be slow or unreliable.

The lesson for a player is practical: if a gambling site asks you to send money to a personal bank account or an oddly named payment channel, you are looking at this world. Our page on when a betting site asks you to pay a personal bank account explains the pattern and the risk.

Questions first-timers ask

How do odds and payouts actually work? In keirin, a JPY 100 ticket on the 2車単 bet, where you must pick the first and second finishers in the correct order, with odds of 4.5 pays JPY 450, and the same ticket at odds of 9418.5 pays JPY 941,850²⁸. Winnings are rounded down: fractions of less than JPY 10 are not paid, and the remainder goes to the organizer's revenue and fan services such as free shuttle buses²⁹.

Will phone betting run up my bill? It can. Heavy users of the telephone voting service have seen phone charges exceed JPY 50,000, and the official guidance recommends internet voting on a flat-rate data plan instead¹⁷.

What are the limits on Japan's official online betting? The JRA's A-PAT service allows up to 9,000 items per day with no limit on the number of bets³⁰, while keirin's internet voting caps acceptance numbers at 99 per day³¹. Both are far above what a casual bettor will ever approach.

Do I need to agree to terms to register? Yes, and it is literal: for the keirin net bank service and internet voting membership, you must select "agree" on the terms screen and press send; selecting "do not agree" blocks the application entirely²³.

What if my deposit does not show up? With e-wallets and crypto, transfers can stall for reasons ranging from network choice to operator review. Our page on gambling deposits not credited lists what to check first.