Crypto casinos that accept Perfect Money

About Perfect Money

Online payment system with its own account balance, accepted at some offshore casinos. Check its fees and ID rules before you use it.

Perfect Money is an online account that holds a balance in dollars, euros or a few other units, which you can send to other Perfect Money users or to websites that accept it. It is not a cryptocurrency and it is not a bank. Think of it as a private ledger. The company keeps a list of who has what, and moves numbers between names when you pay.

At crypto casinos it lives in a grey corner. You will see it in the cashier of some offshore sites, often next to crypto coins, but almost never at casinos with a strong licence, and rarely at crypto-only casinos.

What Perfect Money is and who is behind it

The honest answer is that nobody outside the company seems to know who owns it. In August 2013 Reuters reported that it could not find out. The website listed no phone number and named no managers or staff, and the company did not reply to the news agency. We found no later reporting that changes that picture.

The website says the service is based in Panama. Panama’s securities regulator, the Superintendencia del Mercado de Valores, has published a public warning about a company called Perfect Money Finance Corp. It says the company is registered in Panama’s public registry but holds no licence from the regulator and has no offices of its own in the country. Reuters reported the same in 2013, saying Panama’s government made the statement in January that year.

So there is a name on paper and a website, but no regulator behind it that we could identify. Compare that with Skrill or Neteller, which are run by a listed company and supervised in Europe.

Where it came from, and the 2013 turning point

Reuters says Perfect Money has been running since at least 2007, and for years it was a quiet alternative for people paying across borders without a bank.

The big moment came in May 2013, when US prosecutors shut down Liberty Reserve, a Costa Rica based digital currency with more than a million users. Within days, on 25 May 2013, Perfect Money posted a notice saying it would no longer accept new registrations from people or companies based in the United States, including US citizens living abroad. On 15 June 2013 it told users that all accounts belonging to US citizens, residents and companies would be disabled on 1 July 2013, and advised them to withdraw their balances first. Around the same time it moved its website to perfectmoney.is, an Icelandic domain, and said the move was meant to improve brand recognition.

Idan Aharoni of RSA told Reuters that a large migration from Liberty Reserve to another e-currency had been expected, and that it had happened. Reuters also pointed to a 2011 academic study which found that of 1,000 websites linking to Perfect Money, 70 percent were Ponzi schemes. These are findings from named sources, not our own tests, and we could find no public reply from the company.

How a deposit works at a casino

The flow is short, which is part of the appeal.

1. You open a Perfect Money account and put money in. Money comes in by bank wire, or by buying Perfect Money units from an outside exchanger, which is a separate business that sells those units for cash or for crypto.
2. In the casino cashier you pick Perfect Money, type an amount in dollars or euros, and get sent to the Perfect Money site to log in and confirm.
3. The casino’s account is credited straight away, and your casino balance shows the money.

Because Perfect Money holds dollars and euros, not coins, a crypto casino that takes it is really running a cash cashier next to its crypto one. Some players swap Perfect Money units for Bitcoin at an exchanger and deposit the coin instead. That adds a second middleman and a second set of fees, so an on-ramp such as MoonPay is usually cleaner if crypto is what you want.

Verification and fees, as far as anyone can check

We could not load the company’s own fee and help pages while researching this article, so we are only repeating what reputable outlets have reported. Check the live pages before you rely on any number.

On identity, Reuters reported in 2013 that the website says it checks each customer’s identity, tries to identify the computer used to reach an account, and monitors transactions for suspicious signs. Third party guides describe accounts that work without verification but with limits and higher fees. We could not confirm that from the company itself.

On fees, Dark Reading reported in August 2013 that internal transfers cost 0.5 percent, wire deposits 1.5 percent and up, wire withdrawals 4 percent, optional SMS login codes 10 cents each, and closing an account a fixed 100 dollars plus 3 percent of the balance. Those figures are old. Treat them as the shape of the pricing, not the current rates. An exchanger charges its own spread on top.

Risks worth knowing before you use it

There is no undo button. A Perfect Money payment is a number moved on a private ledger, and there is no card scheme or regulator to complain to if a casino keeps your money. Our guide on what to do when a casino won’t pay explains the routes that do exist, and with this method they are thin.

The sites that take it tell you something. Perfect Money is popular with casinos that cannot or will not work with mainstream payment companies, which often means a weak licence or none at all. Read the casino’s licence page before you deposit, not after.

Exchangers are the weak link. The company itself says its reliability depends on dozens of outside exchangers, which are small businesses of varying quality. Start small.

Set a limit before you start and only deposit what you can afford to lose. Our responsible gambling page has the tools.