MoneyGram Now Available in China
While making deposits isn’t the only difficulty that online poker players face in China, it’s just gotten easier for Chinese players to deposit at great poker rooms like DoylesRoom, PokerStars, and UltimateBet. While these sites may be blocked by the so-called “Great Firewall of China” many online poker players know how to get around that firewall with proxy servers and other technical tricks.
Making a deposit, however, can be more complex. With a newly signed deal between MoneyGram and the Bank of China, though, it will be much easier to make deposits to sites that accept MoneyGram. Over the past six months, MoneyGram launched a pilot with the Bank of China which had MoneyGram operating in 240 branches of the Chinese bank. With the success of the pilot, MoneyGram will soon be available in all 10,000 of the Bank of China branches. This will allow Chinese throughout all of China the option of making deposits through MoneyGram.
MoneyGram is not a particularly popular deposit method, and is not offered at many online poker rooms. Perhaps its availability in China will make it more widely available at a larger number of online poker rooms. Unfortunately, MoneyGram does not solve the issue of withdrawals for Chinese players, which remains the main trouble-spot for Chinese players. Many Chinese online poker players report sending winnings to relatives in other countries in order to avoid this difficulty. Online poker rooms will have to solve this problem if they wish to break into the Chinese market.
