The William Hill Priority Access Mastercard

A couple of months ago, William Hill in partnership with Mastercard introduced the Priority Access card.

It’s William Hill’s solution to that old online gambling bug-bear: cash-out delays.

2-5 business days

The reality of online gambling has always been, celebrate your winnings now, then wait a few days before the cash is in your hand. Not exactly the same as cashing your chips in with your pulse still racing at over 150 beats a minute from the big win you just had, then walking out of the casino with a fat wad of cash burning a hole in your pocket (although probably a lot safer.

Sure there are plenty of virtual wallets that allow for almost instant (few minutes) withdrawal of funds from your casino account. But you still have to get those funds from your Neteller, Skrill or PayPal account into your bank account before it’s truly yours for offline world spending. This is usually a 2-5 day process depending on the wallet and your bank.

Try a withdrawal from your casino account using direct bank transfer (cutting out the virtual wallet step) and you’ll still be waiting 2-5 business days.

In case you hadn’t already guessed, the weak (or slow) link in the whole process is your bank…not the casino, not Neteller, Skrill, PayPal etc.

Neteller have taken steps to give customers direct (offline) access to their funds without the need to involve transfers to your bank account with a Neteller ATM card that you can use to draw cash.

William Hill have come up with a solution of their own.

The Priority Access Mastercard

If you’re a William Hill customer and you have one of these little bad boys, you can now use funds in your William Hill account to pay for every day purchases. It’s just like a bank debit card, only the keeper of the funds is William Hill rather than your bank.

In essence, the instant you have a win at William Hill, you are able to spend that money. Indeed  any time your William Hill online account has money in it, that money can be spent using the card (note however that it’s a prepaid Mastercard­ so no levels of credit are permitted).

Here’s the William Hill marketing team’s explanation of the card.

You can use your William Hill Priority Access Prepaid MasterCard anywhere you see the MasterCard Acceptance Mark.

You can use your William Hill Priority Access Prepaid MasterCard to shop online, withdraw at ATMs/cash machine, spend on the high-street, treat your family and friends to a meal or even use abroad.

How do you get a Priority Access Mastercard?

First of all, you need to be UK resident and have a William Hill account. If you fit this bill you can register your interest in the card via their website, it which point you’ll receive the following message:

THANK YOU FOR YOUR INTEREST, WE’LL BE IN TOUCH SOON

How soon they get in touch with you may depend on how valuable a customer you are (maybe that’s where the ‘priority’ bit in the name comes from).

If you are a VIP from the UK chances are you have already been offered a card. William Hill told EGR Magazine that the card had been rolled out to VIP customers shortly after launch.