I own my own merchant processing company which does cc processing, check processsing, debit processing, electronic gift cards, internet processing, atm machines, etc. What I can tell you is casino's and especially offshore casino's are considered high risk. There are only 3 places in the world that will take them on and they have very tight underwriting policies. They are Bank of Antiqua, Bank of Israel, and a bank in Canada. They must register directly with Visa/MC which is about a $2500 annual fee. They have to pay large application fees that are non refundable and must go through a exhausting underwriting procedure where owner or officer must have A credit with no run in's legally (squeeky clean) and still often they are then put on rolling reserves over 12 months. The fee's they pay are usually 3-5 times higher than a normal business. For example, if you were a normal retail store (clothing for example) you would pay a rate of less than 2 percent which is a rate for the cc being present, swiped thru a terminal, and a signature received on receipt. For an offshore casino, none of these things occur so their rate is over 5-6 percent but often closer to 8-9 percent. If a casino is not taking cc, if often means rather they don't want to bother, don't know where to go to set up, are not squeeky clean in the ownership group, or are too cheap to pay the fees. Hope this helps.
