CFClient Funds Desk Open the partner account
Affiliate disclosure. The partner link in the masthead and beside the copy on this page is a sponsored link to a partner operator, and this site may be paid if you open an account through it, at no extra cost to you. It carries rel="sponsored noopener" and opens in a new tab. Nothing about that payment depends on what is written here: these pages contain no ranking, no review and no recommendation of any operator, and no claim that any protection, guarantee or compensation scheme applies in your territory or to your account. Explaining how customer money is held is not advice about where to keep money — a balance that is correctly held and properly protected is still a claim against a business, and gambling still carries a real risk of loss.
Client Funds Desk / Questions
Ten questions

Questions

The questions readers arrive with, answered directly and without a recommendation of any operator.

Open the partner accountStart with the five-minute check
Direct answerA credited balance is usually a debt rather than your property; segregation keeps that money out of the operator's own spending but cannot prevent a shortfall; a licence is not insurance; and bonus balances are ordinarily outside customer-money treatment. The condition attached to the licence is the document that decides each case.

Each answer above is expanded on the page that owns the mechanism, and the links below go straight to the relevant one. No answer here names an operator, a bank, an authority or a compensation scheme, and none is advice about what to do with a balance.

The partner link below is a disclosed sponsored link and the only commercial element on this page. None of the answers above is a recommendation of any operator.

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The questions, in full

Is the money in my casino account legally mine?

Usually not, in the sense of property. A credited balance is normally a debt: the operator holds the money as its own and owes you an equal amount. Only where an arrangement creates a genuine trust or bailment does the money remain yours, and that is decided by the terms and the licence condition rather than by the deposit screen.

What does segregation actually protect me from?

It protects customer money from being spent on the operator's own costs and from being reached by its general creditors, because it sits in a designated account used only for customers. It does not protect you from a shortfall: a correctly segregated account can still hold less than the balances it stands behind.

Does a gambling licence mean my balance is protected?

The licence itself is not protection. It means the operator is permitted and supervised. Protection exists only if a specific condition attached to that licence requires segregation, a reconciliation and top-up duty, a graded tier, or insurance cover - and only to the extent that condition is met.

Is "safeguarded" the same as "insured"?

No. "Safeguarded" is usually shorthand for "segregated or otherwise protected", which leaves the choice of measure open. "Insured" names a policy or guarantee, which has a cap, exclusions and a defined event. An insurance policy is a promise about a pot running out; segregation is a promise about where the money sits.

What happens to my balance if the operator goes bust?

The account is frozen, an insolvency practitioner takes control, balances are reconciled against the money held, and claims are paid in a legal order. A protected balance is paid early from the separated pool - fully if the pool is whole, partially if it is short. An unprotected balance is an ordinary claim paid from what remains, often after long delays and as instalments.

Do I lose the stake on an open bet if the operator fails?

The stake was committed when the bet was placed, so it is not a separate thing you keep. If the bet would have won, your claim is for the total return, which already contains the stake. If it would have lost, there is no claim on the bet, although the money may have been part of the balance until the bet was placed.

Is a pending withdrawal treated differently from a balance?

It can be, because a requested withdrawal is a specific sum the operator has accepted a duty to pay, which is a different kind of claim from a general credited balance. Whether it is treated better depends on the operator's terms and on the law of its jurisdiction, and the four states - requested, processing, approved and paid - are not equivalent.

Is bonus money in my balance covered by funds protection?

Usually not. Bonus-derived funds are normally conditional on meeting a wagering requirement, are excluded from customer-money treatment in the terms, and can be removed by the operator. The practical consequence is that a bonus balance is the first thing lost and the last thing payable in a failure.

Where can I find out how my operator holds customer money?

Three documents, in order of authority: the licence condition on the authority's register, the operator's own terms section on how customer funds are held, and any published customer-money statement. Where none of them states a mechanism - an account, a frequency, a duty, a cap - the arrangement is simply not disclosed.

Does any of this mean I should not hold a balance?

This desk does not advise on what to do, and it has no view on which operator holds money well. The mechanism itself carries one useful implication: a balance is a claim against a business rather than money in a box, and a claim is worth exactly what the arrangement behind it is worth - which is why the arrangement is worth five minutes of reading.