Visa was the first credit card, invented in the 1950’s, as a means of making consumer loans at high interest for the borrower and low cost to the bank. They soon supplanted charge cards issued by individual retailers. A generation later, a second kind of bank card came along, designed for automatic teller machines. For people who did not have a credit card, the “debit card” came into existence. It would work with ATM’s, and it would function just like a credit card, but only to the extent of funds in the user’s account. The bank would not advance funds to the customer by means of the card.

Because not every participating credit card merchant had immediate electronic access to verification of a customer’s debit card balance, banks using the Visa Debit Card would honor transactions even if they overdrew the customer’s account. This made the cards more acceptable to off-line merchants, and it proved to be a windfall for banks in fees.

A second kind of Visa Debit card that would not overdraw the customer’s account was invented and then distributed in several countries, but not in the US. This is the Visa Electron Debit Card.

For purposes of funding online gambling accounts, the Visa Debit card functions just like the Visa Credit card, with the advantage that one cannot transfer more money into a gambling account than is already in the bank. Like Visa Credit card charges, a high percentage of Visa Debit charges to those gambling sites that have been identified as such by the processing company, are routinely denied. Like Visa Credit card use, the Visa Debit Card can be used for withdrawals of winnings from a gambling website, but not all such sites will use that method, preferring instead to issue checks.