Casino.com

“The most trusted online casino in South Africa” is a big claim, but is it accurate? South African online casino players are well familiar with Casino.com, both because it has a huge online casino game offering and also because it has TWO different licenses from two respected gaming authorities! Safe, yes. Worth your real money online gambling? Let’s find out.

Putting ‘casino’ in online casino for South Africa

Until recently, South African online casino fans have been quite restricted when it comes to truly premium online casino offerings. That is changing fast with some really outstanding online gambling partners opening up their doors for South African players. It may be that our legislation is slowly changing to allow more online casino games to be played legally, or it may be that premium sites like Play.co.za, Jackpot, and PlayLive are starting to show South African players what they should be expecting.

But before all these new players entered the market, there was Casino.com.

A quick look at Casino.com online casino

Casino.com have been around on the international circuit since 2007 but are relatively new to the South African market. Mansion Group are the owners, and they are licensed across TWO different territories – Gibraltar and the UK – so you know that they’re serious about bringing real money gaming to real players with an overarching emphasis on player safety and legitimacy.

Casino.com offers great bonuses but it is the staggering number of games on offer that truly make this online casino special. They literally offer everything: from online slots to online progressive jackpots, from online table games to online Live Casino games, and everything in between!

Unfortunately, this huge international footprint is the cause of our biggest gripe with Casino.com: the currency.

While we have registered from South Africa and opted to play in ZAR (which is awesome thank you Casino.com) ALL the bonuses and promos are presented in Euros, Pounds, or US Dollars! Sure, Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man could probably work out exchange rates instantly in his head, but we can’t. Come on, Casino.com, just give us all the deets in our favourite ZARs already!

Just the facts at Casino.com

Name: Casino.com

URL: www.casino.com

Mobile version: Yes

License: Gibraltar, UK

Games: online slots, online table games, specialty games, online Live Casino

Game providers: Multiple – Playtech, NetEnt, Play’n Go, Red Tiger, Blueprint Gaming, Realistic, Eyecon, Quickspin, Skywind, Pragmatic Play, IGT, Microgaming (Microgaming is not available to players from South Africa), iSoftbet.

Bonus: Welcome bonus, Deposit bonus

Promotions: Weekly and monthly bonuses, happy hour bonus, Gold Card promotion, loyalty bonus, comp points, VIP programme

The Casino.com online experience

Casino.com is an impressive gambling partner for South African online gamblers. Clean, classy, elegant, and quite open. By ‘open’ we mean that they have a lot of communication on their website that relates to Responsible Gambling and Safer Gambling along with plenty of tips and advice on how to gamble responsibly. Added to their comprehensive FAQs and lots of guides in their blog section, it really makes us feel as if Casino.com are a gambling partner that puts safety front and centre and can be considered a reliable and trusted online casino for South African players.

Registration is rather streamlined as well. Click the ‘Join’ button on the top right of the screen, complete the required fields, verify your email, and you’re done. The details are a lot simpler than most online casinos: name, surname, DoB, address, country, currency. Create a username and password. Click the link from your email. Finished.

This is not to say that players don’t need to be properly identified and upload their FICA and financial documents, but this happens later so players can register quickly and explore the website before they start playing for real money.

As expected of such a well-respected and popular online casino, the website and the mobile casino are both incredibly well designed with intuitive functionality. Options are displayed across various positions such as a drop-down menu on the top left of your screen, quick links below the header visual area and links at the bottom of the page. Fast navigation gets you to your chosen games and pages quickly and easily.

The drop-down menu gives you a choice of Home, Promotions, Safer Gambling, Support, and About Us. The main header at the top of the page has links to Casino, Live Casino, Promotions, Safer Gambling, and Contact Us.

Player profiles and Account Balance, and deposit buttons replace the Log In and Join buttons on the top right of the screen.

The main page is dominated by an animated banner that advertises the latest promos and bonuses while the main lobby tabs are just below this. Players can jump to their chosen lobbies and see the huge variety of games on offer by clicking on All Games, Top Games, Premium Casino, Live Casino, Megaways, Slots, Table Games, and Jackpots. The Online South Africa Casinos team are not 100% certain on what makes the ‘Premium Casino’ different to the Slots or Table Games lobbies.

You can filter and sort your searches by most popular, A – Z names, jackpot size, or game provider.

The rest of the home page is populated with the usual colourful thumbnails of different online casino games on offer.

The foot of the page is quite busy as it seems to have links to almost everything under the Casino.com sun. There are links to Online Casino Games (guides to the different casino games that South African players can enjoy), links to Banking guides, Links to the different Casino.com offerings around the world, Links to Player Support (everything from FAQs to Contact Us to Deposits & Withdrawals), and links to Promos and a very cool Blog. Seriously, check out the Casino.com blog for some insightful and valuable articles, advice, and stories.

All in all, the Casino.com online experience is a good one. It’s an easy to navigate site with plenty of links to all the games and lobbies and lots and lots of info that South African online gamblers will find both useful and entertaining.

Online casino games at Casino.com

But it’s the games that our ZA gamblers want to know about and Casino.com does not disappoint.

With some of the top international online casino game providers on board, Casino.com brings 100’s of the latest and most popular online casino games to South African players. Online slots, online progressive jackpots, online poker, online blackjack, online Live Casino, everything you could possibly want to play presented with a whole lot of different variations to keep you interested and playing.

Casino.com have partnered with top studios to bring players great games. Blueprint, NetEnt, Playtech, Quickspin, Realistic, Red Tiger, Pragmatic Play, Play’n GO, Eyecon, Skywind, and iSoftbet make sure players have thrilling and varied choices from classic fruit machines to the latest Megaways, from table games to Live Casino, and some quite unusual options sprinkled in between. Sad news is that Casino.com do have Microgaming as a provider but Microgaming (for whatever reasons) do not allow South Africans to play their world famous and world record jackpot games. Booo.

But there are still some HUGE progressive jackpots. Casino.com offers the entire gamut of big win opportunities: Mega Fortune, an absolutely massive selection of Age of the Gods, Kingdom Rise, Megaways and Jackpot Kings variations and more that all offer multi-million Rand payouts.

One thing that did strike us as odd: Casino.com used to have a quite big online sports book. It seems as though they have closed down that aspect of their online gambling business in recent times though.

Online slots

Over 700 online slots are available to South African online slots players with every theme and variation accounted for. 3-reel, 5-reel, more-reel, cascading symbols, fruit machines, video, animated, classic – the choice is amazing. With Megaways galore, the full range of Playtech movie themes, Play’n Go innovations, and big, BIG jackpots, players will be spinning for days.

Online table games

There are 36 online table games for fans of cards and wheels. Online blackjack, online poker, and online roulette dominate but baccarat players can also find a variation or two of this classic casino game.

The online table games offering is a little small, especially when you consider the size and international reach of Casino.com, but they seem to have put much more effort into making the table games at the online Live Casino the focus

Online Live Casino

The online Live Casino is a spectacular and classy casino away from the land-based casino. Lots of games, lots of variants, lots of languages make the Casino.com online Live Casino a great visit.

Roulette, blackjack, baccarat, Spin and Win, Game Shows, poker, and Andar Bahar – with all their different and unique variations – are hosted by professional, highly-trained, and superbly elegant dealers who bring the casino action straight to your device.

Casino.com online casino bonuses, promotions, and free spins

Casino.com has a great welcome bonus as well as deposit bonuses. Terms and conditions apply to all bonuses so make sure you read and understand the playthrough or wagering requirements.

Online casino bonuses and promos codes can be redeemed under the Account/Promo Code section of your player profile. The one annoyance we have with Casino.com is that all the bonuses are reflected in Euros or UD Dollars so it can be tricky to work out if the same amount applies to South African Rands or if we need to convert using the latest exchange rates. Annoying.

Casino.com has regularly updated promotions so make sure you opt in for messaging and you can get all the latest promos, offers, and bonuses as they are made available.

Casino.com Welcome Bonus

A good online casino welcome bonus of a 1^st deposit match plus Free Spins

100% match up to $400 on your first deposit. 40x wagering requirement. Ts & Cs apply.

PLUS 180 Free Spins on selected Age of the Gods slot. 20x wagering requirement. Ts & Cs apply.

Note: players get 40x Free Spins on 1^st deposit plus 20x Free Spins per day for the next 8 days.

Casino.com Promotions

Promotions are updated regularly but do also include promos that run all the time.

• Monthly drops & wins

$500,000 every month, includes daily prizes. Ts & Cs apply.

• Two for Tuesdays

Double bonus every Tuesday. Ts & Cs apply.

• Thunder Thursdays

Free Spins awarded to those who complete the quest. Ts & Cs apply.

• Friday Big Quiz

Free-to-play Live trivia game every Friday

• Golden Sundays

Add up to 6 Golden Chips to your Live Casino stack every Sunday. Ts & Cs apply.

Casino.com Loyalty and VIP programmes

Casino.com have a VIP Club that seems to be quite the place to get into. While we have no illusions that we will be invited any time soon, this invite-only high roller club has some incredible features.

If you catch the eyes of the Casino.com account managers and get invited to the VIP Club (or, if you are a proper whale, the VIP ELITE!) you can enjoy regular deposits bonuses, 24/7 customer service, exclusive promos, a dedicated VIP team, personal account managers, special gifts, personal cashback offers, and invitations to exclusive VIP events.

It was these exclusive VIP events that caught our eye. In the Blog section, at the bottom of the page, is more info on the VIP Club and they mention some of their VIP Events: international polo in Spin, the Monaco F1, tickets to El Classico (Real Madrid v Barcelona), Usyk vs Joshua – real high-end pampering!

Online casino banking methods

As an international online casino Casino.com has a LOT of different banking channels for deposits and withdrawals. For South Africans, the safest and most trusted channels to use include:

• Visa and Mastercard
• EasyEFT
• ecoPayz
• Skrill
• Neteller
• MuchBetter
• AstroPay

Withdrawals will be done into the same banking method as used for deposits WHERE POSSIBLE (channels like Mastercard do not accept deposits). EFT, after all legal checks and FICA requirements have been done, is the most common method.

Casino.com Security & Support

Casino.com is fully licensed through Gibraltar and the UK – double the sense of security. They are fully Responsible Gambling and Privacy Policy protocols compliant.

Casino.com is secured using industry-standard encryption and security.

Players can contact Casino.com using email, telephone (international number) or LiveChat.

Mobile casino

Casino.com has a fully responsive mobile version accessed via the browser on your mobile device.

The OSAC verdict:

Pros

• Good selection of games and providers
• Able to play in ZAR
• Great website design and usability
• Lots of bonuses
• International reputation for safety and fair play

Cons

• Withdrawal can take some time due to Casino.com’s strict regulatory policy
• Bonuses in Euros/Pounds/US Dollars – show in ZAR please!