New Hampshire Works Around UIGEA

July 01, 2010 | News Category: Gaming Law

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No matter what kind of victory those who are supporters of the UIGEA (Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act) feel they may have won when the UIGEA came into effect recently, there are always those that will find a way to work around it. In this case, the state of New Hampshire has plans to allow some online gambling in their state, yet they had to figure out how their players would be able to deposit funds with the online gambling site.

The UIGEA does not make online gambling illegal, but simply the processing of online gambling financial transactions, which means that the responsibility is on financial institutions to ensure that they do not process any transactions that come from, or are going to, online gambling sources.

New Hampshire took the decision to legalize online gambling in their state. The plan is that the state will run online gambling sites that can be played in only by those in New Hampshire.

Since state lotteries are allowed to operate on a federal level, and should have no issues regarding online gambling financial transactions, players will be able to fund their online gambling accounts for the New Hampshire online casino at lottery ticket sale locations.

The way it will work is that players will not add to their funds online, but will go in person to a sales point for lottery tickets, where they will purchase an actual paper ticket. The ticket will have a code on it that will be entered onto the online gambling site. The code is unique for each card, and ensures the player that the correct amount of credits should be uploaded. Once the code has been entered onto the site, the funds that were purchased will be added to the player’s account. In this way, there are no financial transactions that can be linked with an online gambling site, because the ticket purchases were made at a physical location, which sells lottery tickets.

Should these online gambling tickets be used for any other non-gambling purpose, then, at least technically, the coded “paper ticket” should be able to be purchased by credit cards, and even possibly online, because the card would then most likely be acceptable for processing by the credit card companies, and other financial institutions. Should this become a reality, and a success, it would mean that there would be no need for third party processing in order to fund online casino accounts.