Do I Have to Accept My Casino Welcome Bonus?

December 29, 2016

When you register a real money account at any of our reviewed Aussie online casinos you will be offered some kind of guaranteed new player welcome bonus and the question that many players have asked is “Do I have to accept my welcome bonus?” The answer is “No” you don’t have to accept your new player welcome bonus.

The new player welcome bonus at most Aussie online casinos today is usually a matching deposit bonus and this means that the casino will match your deposit up to a certain amount. A common matching deposit bonus that you are likely to come across is the 100% match bonus which effectively means that you can double up on your deposit.

If the 100% match bonus is worth up to AU$200, this means that if you deposit the full AU$200 the casino will give you another AU$200 bonus on top of your deposit. If you deposit just AU$20 with the 100% match bonus it means that you will end up with a total of AU$40 to play with (AU$20 deposit + AU$20 bonus), and so on. You couldn’t then withdraw your bonus cash as soon as you receive it. You have to complete what are known as wagering requirements or playthrough requirements.

This is one of the only reasons why some players will choose not to accept a deposit bonus. The wagering requirement is the amount that you must spend before you can withdraw any potential winnings that you make from your bonus and this could be anywhere from 20x times the bonus amount up to usually no more than 50x times the bonus amount. Sometimes you have to wager the bonus amount AND the deposit amount.

Therefore if you deposit AU$50 and get your AU$50 bonus, and if this bonus comes with a 30x times wagering requirement, the exact amount that you would need to wager in the casino before you could start the withdrawal process would be AU$1,550 (AU$50 x 30 = AU$1,500, plus your AU$50 deposit, therefore AU$1,550). You also often only have a certain amount of time to complete your wagering requirements and this is also why some players would choose not to accept a bonus, especially if they don’t plan on spending too much time in the casino.

If you don’t accept the welcome bonus when you are first offered it, then it will expire and there is no way that you could go back and claim it if you changed your mind. The best thing to do would be to accept the bonus, but make sure that you read through the T’s & C’s to begin with and try to look for the bonuses with relatively low wagering requirements.