What is a non cashable bonus?

When you visit an online casino nowadays you will almost invariably find that the casino is offering a number of promotions which include bonuses and/or free bets. These can range from just £20 or so right up to £3,000 or even more. Some bonuses are awarded as free bets just for signing up and those tend to be under £50 or so, and others are deposit matching bonuses which are awarded as a percentage of your initial and sometimes subsequent deposits.

Although some online casinos have very impressive headline bonuses, you need to delve a little deeper than the headlines in order to discover their real worth. Make no mistake: these bonuses can be extremely valuable and are a great way to profit from your time playing online, but you also need to understand the terms on which they are offered.

These bonuses are all non-cashable. Of course this makes sense. If they were cashable then you could just sign up and walk away with an instant profit; the casinos would soon go out of business.

What non-cashable bonuses give you are free gambling chips to play with. What you get to keep is not the bonus but the profits you make using the bonus to play with or make bets.

When it comes to use your bonus as playing chips, there are always additional terms and conditions that determine when you can make cash withdrawals. If the bonus is a ‘free’ bonus and is awarded without the need to make money, then you will need to ‘play through’ it a specified number of times before you can make a withdrawal. Generally this is between 20 and 30 times and whilst some games, such as slots, will count 100% towards this play through requirement, others such a blackjack, will count just a few percent.

With deposit matching bonuses you will need to play through the total of initial deposit plus bonus. For instance if you claim a 150% initial deposit bonus on your fist £100 deposit, then you will find that you will have £250 worth of chips in your account. The play through requirements tends to be as above with free bonuses, which means that with a 20 times play through you need to bet a minimum of £5,000 before you can withdraw any cash. If you choose to play games such as blackjack then this can increase significantly.