Australian Online Casinos Liked FirePay

Australians are great lovers of gambling. Until 2001 they were able to happily gamble at a number of Australian casinos online. Until the electronic wallet system FirePay became available, they almost always used their credit cards to fund their online gambling habits. FirePay was a much faster and easier method of online banking in Australia, and it became a very popular way to deposit funds into Australian casinos online.

Then in 2001 Australian online casinos got hit by the Australian government. It became against the law for any Australian online casino to offer online gambling to an Australian citizen, and, slowly, Australian casinos online dropped from sight.

However, the Australian government could not and cannot prevent their citizens from gambling online at casinos that are based outside the country of Australia. Therefore, try as I much as I could, I was not able to find any Australian based online casino site to play in. All of the Australian casinos online, if you go into their sites and check their backgrounds, are based in the U.K., in Gibraltar or other areas which put them outside of the Australian government ban.

Why FirePay Was Popular

At the time that FirePay was established in the U.K., just about the only electronic financial payment method available was PayPal, and FirePay was actually established as a competitor to PayPal. This system had many advantages:

• Opening a FirePay account was free
• No charges to sign up or make payments or transfer funds
• Funding is direct from the customer's bank account
• Deposits are instant
• No clearing time for funds received
• No restrictions on withdrawing your funds
• Round the clock support
• All this was very fine for online banking in Australia, and, despite the government ban on Australian casinos online, FirePay was widely used by Australian online gamblers.
  
  

  Where Is FirePay Today?

  Despite its 1.5 million users, FirePay never really caught on internationally, and in December 2007 it announced that it would be shutting down its services. FirePay gave its customers 150 days from the date of December 10, 2007, to withdraw their funds and review their account statements. After that time the accounts closed down completely.
  
  Just to be sure that I hadn't received some misinformation on FirePay, I checked into many casino sites and reviewed their banking options. None of the sites that I went into offered FirePay as a banking option. In particular, I went into Microgaming casino sites because Microgaming casinos have really good reputations. Nowhere did I find FirePay offered as a payment system.
  
  Therefore, I am assuming that the information I received about the shutdown in December, 2007, is correct and that this company no longer exists. I am quite sure that there are many other possibilities open for online banking in Australia today.