The Best PayPal Friendly iPhone Poker Apps

iPhone poker sites have plenty of ways to compete for their customers. They introduce new poker variants, tempt you with generous promotions and promise good, soft competition and high traffic even on niche tables – but in the end, all of that isn’t really worth that much if the banking support isn’t absolutely top notch. As a result, most serious poker rooms have reached a high level of excellence in this regard, to the point that players started expecting more than what the standard checks and wire transfers could provide. They wanted on the spot money transfers, but traditional options required them to wait – so the rooms started looking for other solutions, like e-wallet sites. Those sites offer immediate money transactions, so it should come as no surprise that the biggest and most popular e-wallet site, PayPal, quickly became the standard across the industry. 

Even though PayPal introduced a  rather stringent gambling policy and doesn’t cooperate with poker sites operating outside of Europe due to the US Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, it remains the most popular choice for many iPhone poker rooms reviewed on this site. This guide has been prepared to give you an idea  of how specific rooms deal with PayPal money transactions – both deposits and withdrawals– and to tell you a few things about the limitations of relying on this exceptionally comfortable banking method.

mFortune Texas Holdem for iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry & Winodows Phone

mFortune is an interesting case, as using PayPal is possible regardless of your country of residence. The minimum amount you can deposit is £5, while the maximum is £500 and just like with all the other rooms reviewed here, mFortune will credit all PayPal payments to your account without any delays. What’s more, mFortune is definitely one of the fastest sites when it comes to withdrawals, as they usually take around three working days to process, which is pretty much lightning fast when compared with other sites, many of which tend to take a week or more. The minimum withdrawal amount is  £10, which is the standard in the industry and shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

888 Mobile Poker for iOS & Android

888 Poker supports both deposits and withdrawals using PayPal and, quite surprisingly, is very similar to Ladbrokes when it comes to processing them. The minimum allowed size of your deposit is £10 and some considerable country limitations apply, meaning that PayPal is available only for customers playing from Spain, United Kingdom, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Sweden and Austria. As you’d expect the deposits are processed and credited to your account without any delays, but waiting for a withdrawal can be a rather long process. Basically, every single transaction may take up to seven days – or four if you’re a Gold VIP club member. This means that the service is simply no different from a bank transfer and leaves plenty of room for improvement in the future.

Bwin Mobile for iOS and Android

Bwin Poker is a rather special case when compared with the other sites included in this guide, as this particular room doesn’t provide you with a list of countries allowed to use PayPal as a banking option. This actually stops being surprising once you consider the fact that Bwin is rather picky when it comes to allowing new user registrations, so players allowed to play on this site generally speaking are more than likely to be residing in one of the countries that have been green-lighted by PayPal in the first place. Adhering to the industry-wide standard, your PayPal payments will be handled instantly, but your withdrawals may take between three and four days. Keep in mind that the minimum size of your withdrawal is £20, so you won’t be making all that many micro transactions even though all PayPal banking services are offered free of charge.

Ladbrokes Mobile Poker for iPhone, iPad & Android

Ladbrokes Poker allows you to use PayPal both for  deposits and withdrawals and like all e-wallet transactions in this room, each transfer is free of charge. When planning your transaction, keep in mind that the site has a £10 limit in place for both withdrawals and deposits, so if you want to make a smaller payment you’ll be forced to consider another option. Making a PayPal payment is instant on Ladbrokes, but withdrawals may take about six hours to process. Like all the other PayPal-friendly poker sites, Ladbrokes limits the availability of the service to residents of several specific countries, which include Austria, Greece, Finland, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, Sweden, United Kingdom and Spain. What’s more, only one PayPal account may be tied to your Ladbrokes account at any given time.

PKR iPhone 3D Poker App

Unlike most other sites I’ve listed here, PKR comes with rather limited PayPal support. According to the room’s website, there is no PayPal-specific minimal deposit size and players from the United Kingdom and Denmark are allowed to make 100% instant deposits straight to their PKR account using our favorite e-wallet site. However, making a withdrawal from e-wallets on this site may take up to 4 days and up to 48 hours to actually finalize the transaction, so while making a payment gives you a significant advantage in terms of time saved over traditional banking options, withdrawals aren’t really all that different from a wire transfer. Definitely some room for improvement here.
As you can clearly see, while several sites support PayPal, the exact details tend to vary considerably from site to site, and you therefore shouldn’t expect the same service from different rooms even when using the same e-wallet solution. In the end, country restrictions, deposit and withdrawal limits and the speed at which your transactions are handled are quite likely to reflect each site’s approach to its customers, but you can rest assured that no matter where you play, your funds and personal information will be safe, while each money transfer will be handled with a high degree of professionalism. This simple truth applies to all the poker rooms reviewed here, as surviving on the extremely competitive iPhone online poker market would be impossible without paying utmost care to the financial side of the business.

If you don't already have a PayPal account just visit https://www.paypal.com and sign-up today.