How To Approach Cash First Offers

You'll often hear us talking about whether a casino uses cash or bonus funds first, and how it impacts an offer.

It’s an important part of casino offers.

But what does it mean?  

When you get a bonus, or free spins, with wagering requirements, there are two things that might happen: 

• The casino uses bonus funds before cash
• The casino uses cash before bonus funds

If the casino uses bonus funds before cash… When we attempt the bonus wagering, the casino will first use our bonus balance. It will only use our cash balance after the bonus has gone.  

But…

If the casino uses cash before bonus funds… When we attempt the bonus wagering, the casino will first use up our cash balance.  It will only use our bonus balance once our cash is gone.

If you’re thinking that sounds a bit naughty, or unfair of the casino, then you might be right.  

But it’s all part of their T&Cs, and is often the case, so its something we need to understand and prepare for.

Before starting any offer with wagering requirements, you should know if the casino uses cash first. If cash is used first, then you should know exactly how that impacts your approach to the offer.

In this guide I will be going through the following points and help you become a cash before bonus expert:

The first thing to note is that this is only relevant to offers with wagering requirements. 

So for offers with no wagering requirements, you don’t need to worry about whether its cash or bonus funds first. 

Likewise, for offers with 1x wagering, it doesn’t matter whether a casino uses cash or bonus first,

Nektan Warning: there is one main exception to this, which is casinos in the Nektan Group (like Jackpot Jones & Scorching Slots).  These casinos make you lose your cash balance before you can start the 1x wagering requirements.  So you should avoid these offers. 

It can be difficult to know by looking at a casino’s T&Cs.  

To help you, we have compiled this information in our Casino Database. 

Search for a casino in the Database, and it will tell you whether they use cash or bonus first.  

You will also find other important information, and guides on completing common invite-only offers.  

We will now explain how to approach the 3 most common types of offer on casinos that use cash before bonus funds. These are:

Often casinos will encourage you to deposit money to receive a bonus.  

Offers like: 

• 100% bonus on your next deposit up to £100
• 50% bonus on your next deposit up to £50
• Deposit £20 play with £40
• Deposit £10 get £10 bonus

On the face of it, these offers might seem like good offers.

Who wouldn’t want free money after all?   

However, these offers will almost always come with very large wagering requirements,

There would be a strong chance that you wouldn't complete the wagering requirements. Because your cash balance is used first, you would lose your entire deposit in the process. 

In fact, you could have an 80%+ chance of losing your entire deposit.

Generally, we would recommend avoiding such offers, unless they have been recommended on our Welcome or Reload Offers Dashboards, and you have suitable experience and bankroll.

If you know that a casino uses cash first, couldn’t you deposit, and then withdraw your cash balance to make a bonus risk-free?

Unfortunately no.  

If you have a bonus balance, then withdrawing any of your cash balance will usually lead to the bonus being cancelled.   

This is to stop people from starting these offers, and then withdrawing their cash to make it risk-free.  

If a casino uses cash before bonus funds, and you have a cash balance and bonus balance, then forfeiting the bonus is probably going to be the best thing to do.  You don’t want to risk losing your real money.  

Sometimes you’ll receive offers promising you free spins for making a deposit.  

Whilst making a withdrawal almost always cancels a bonus, this often isn’t the case for free spins.

Some casinos, allow you to withdraw without forfeiting free spins, so you may be able to use the following approach: 

This normally works for casinos in Daub Group (Aspers, Regal Wins, Magical Vegas and Spin and Win).  But do be aware that it may not work for every casino.

Sometimes withdrawing may cancel both bonuses and free spins. In which case, avoid such offers on cash-first casinos. 

So how do we approach offers, where we have to wager to receive a reward, which has wagering requirements. 

There is quite an easy way to do this.

We need to ensure that we withdraw almost all our cash balance before completing the wagering. 

Our aim is to withdraw as much of our cash balance as possible just before we receive the bonus.

Let's say you need to wager £10 to receive a £10 bonus.

What we can do is wager £9.80 on the required slot.   

Now withdraw almost your entire cash balance, leaving just enough money in your account to complete the wagering.

Once we have done the withdrawal, we can wager the final 20p to receive our bonus.

We can then attempt to wager our bonus, knowing that our cash balance is not at risk.