M99 Casino

M99 Casino Review

Let’s be honest here for a few minutes – most Australian online casinos (as in, ones that target specifically Australian players) aren’t particularly good. Sure, there are tons of international sites which are fantastic and very much worth playing at, but in terms of those that seem to exclusively focus on Aussies, we’ve had our fair share of disappointments. Alas, just a glance of M99 Casino (or M99AU, as it’s sometimes called) showed us quite plainly that this won’t be any different.

The website’s interface is atrocious, and it’s borderline impossible to tell what is where. Many bonuses are only mentioned on a single fleeting banner, but then don’t actually appear in the dedicated promotions page. A ton of the games come from unknown Chinese companies and feature copyrighted characters like Super Mario, which leads us to believe they’re fake. Worst of all, the site is unlicensed and with an unknown owner.

Obviously, M99 is a scam, through and through. You don’t even need to read further than that – but since you’re here, how about we turn this into an educational experience where we teach you how to spot fraudulent casinos?

M99 Casino Bonuses

No Deposit Bonus – AU$18

Before we dive into the bonuses of M99 Casino, it’s very important to point out that the information about them is extremely unreliable, and many of the details are unclear or even contradictory. Under normal circumstances, we would have contacted the casino’s support team to help us out, but since this wasn’t possible here (don’t worry, we’ll get to that), we were pretty much left in the dark. We’ve tried our best to describe the bonuses accurately, but with things being as they are, we’re likely to make a mistake or two.

Take, for example, the no deposit bonus, which is proudly advertised as AU$18 you’d get just for signing up! That’s a fantastic offer no matter how you slice it… except, it’s not available anywhere except for a banner that doesn’t give you any more information about it. What are the restrictions on this offer? How about the wagering requirements? Are there any limitations? Sadly, there really isn’t much information we can give you about this bonus, assuming it’s even real and not just a meaningless banner.

Welcome Bonus – 100% Match up to AU$500

But the no deposit bonus isn’t the only one that is poorly described here at M99 Casino. There’s also the welcome offer: a 100% match up to AU$500! Seems very straightforward, right? If you deposit at least AU$20 the very first time you’re buying chips at M99, your money will be doubled, though at the condition that, until your bonus is withdrawn or voided, you can only play slot games. But… how do you withdraw it, exactly?

Looking at the terms and conditions, the only thing they specify is that you need to “win over x6”. But what does that mean? Does that mean you need to wager it 6 times? That seems very low, plus it contradicts the line about how the maximum withdrawal is AU$2,000 (there’s no way you can withdraw AU$2,000 with just an x6 wagering requirement on slots, the math just ain’t mathin’). So… What must you actually do to withdraw this offer? We’re afraid we’re just as lost as you are.

Reload Promotions at M99 Casino

(Un?)fortunately, M99 Casino will not give you any additional welcome bonuses, be it as part of a welcome package or for any other reason. There is a separate sports betting offer which you can claim instead of the casino one, but since you can only pick one or the other, you’ll be stuck relying on reload promotions from your second deposit onward. We wish we could tell you that they’re much better, but alas, they really aren’t.

Let’s take, for example, the “Top Up” promotions. At their core, they sound quite simple – all you need to do is deposit a specified sum (for example, AU$30 or more), and if you do, you’ll get a set amount as a bonus (like AU$10). In this way, it’s less like traditional match bonuses and more like the free bets you’d find in bookmakers, so couldn’t be simpler to understand, right? Except, once you glance at the bonus conditions, you’ll see you need to “hit 100 credits”. What does that even mean? This is the only time “credits” are ever mentioned on M99 Casino at all!

M99 offers tons of different reload offers, some of which are permanent fictures while others come and go monthly. And yet, with the terms being so unclear at best and nonsensical at worst, practically all of these bonuses become entirely worthless.

Games

But forget about these bonuses! Sure, they’re not great, but even if they were, they wouldn’t be what makes you stick around at M99. Instead, that responsibility would lie solely upon the many games that are undoubtedly available here. Whether you’re a fan of slots, live games, or even sports betting, there’s sure to be plenty of options here just for you… right?

Well, not quite. M99’s games are very limited in both number and diversity. We’ll talk more about the pokies and live games in their own sections, but for now, let’s discuss the remaining offerings: sports betting and fishing games. The fishing games are very limited, with just 4 different titles available – and on top of that, many other types of instant win games (like Aviator) are completely absent. As for the sports betting, although it’s clearly advertised and has its own category, that category just leads to external betting sites. What a ripoff!

Pokies

Slots have always been arguably the most popular activity at any online casino, but if you fancy yourself a bit of a pokie aficionado, prepare to be deeply disappointed. Not only does M99 offer a very limited number of games (just a few hundred, compared to the thousands at other casinos), but the titles on offer aren’t even very good!

We have to say that even we, as professional reviewers, have never heard of providers like 918 Kaya, I Love U, Fastspin, or (oh God, can we even say this) Pussy888. Most of them seem to be Chinese brands, not only because of their odd naming conventions, but also because many of their pokies feature copyrighted characters owned by international companies like Nintendo. As you may already know, copyright law is a bit of a gray area in China (that’s why there are so many knock-off Chinese products of Western properties, like toys), which, in turn, means that most of these games are unauthorized and borderline fake.

Live casino

Okay, so the pokies are fake, but surely that won’t affect the live casino, right? True, but when it has to stand on its own two feet, M99 fails miserably. For starters, you can only access a few Chinese live casino providers, such as Sexy, Big Gaming, and CT855. Many of those rooms don’t feature English speakers at all, and when they do, many of the popular games which you’d find at Western online casinos aren’t at all available here for us. Which is perfectly fine if you’re a Chinese casino, but isn’t M99 supposed to be strictly for Australians?!

Deposits & Withdrawals

Although we haven’t mentioned this yet, M99 is technically a crypto casino – you can’t use any traditional methods, such as a credit card or an e-wallet like Neteller, to make a deposit there. The only methods that the site accepts, as of the time of writing, are crypto coins (we’re sure for reasons unrelated to the fact that it’s impossible to get a refund on crypto deposits). So if this isn’t your cup of tea, you’d best look elsewhere.

The thing is, crypto sites typically offer a very wide array of different crypto currencies – not just the biggest ones, but also many that you wouldn’t typically find and are more reserved for crypto enthusiasts. This isn’t the case with M99 Casino, which offers a whopping 5 coins: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Litecoin, and Tether. As you’ve likely noticed, these are the five biggest and most popular cryptos – which, on one hand, means most people should be satisfied with them. But at the same time, if you’re going to stay limited to just crypto, why not go all the way with it?

Withdrawal time

Now, before we talk about the withdrawal time, it’s important to point out that the following information is purely theoretical. We can’t actually guarantee that M99 Casino will actually send you any of your winnings, as there are many red flags surrounding the site that lead us to believe that it may be fraudulent.

With that said, the good news here is that since M99 deals exclusively in crypto, withdrawals should be fairly fast. Unlike, say, credit card withdrawals, which are subject to intense and time-consuming verification procedures from the banks involved, crypto transactions are completely anonymous and not subject to any scrutiny at all. This makes them inherently unsafe, in that if you paid money to a scammer there is literally no way to get them back, but at the same time, it means most transactions will take anywhere from a few seconds to a few hours, tops.

Some coins (like Litecoin and Ethereum) are much faster than others (like Bitcoin and Dogecoin), so keep that in mind when choosing what to use for your transactions.

VIP Program

M99 Casino has quite a lot of different bonuses, so in all honesty, we wouldn’t have been too bothered if it didn’t ultimately have a dedicated VIP program. After all, the reason why so many casinos include such a program is to reward persistent, long-term players, so as long as that’s done, who cares if there’s a VIP program, right? Well, believe it or not, while M99 Casino doesn’t have a special program or anything, it still has some VIP bonuses! How nice! What are they?

Well, the way they work here is that if you deposit a certain amount of money over the course of a month, you get a bonus at the beginning of the next one. Keep in mind, we’re talking specifically about deposits here, not on wagers like is the case with most other online casinos – so the VIPs here aren’t the ones who play the most, but the ones who are willing to spend the most money. On top of that, the amounts you’d need to deposit to get even the most meager of bonuses are outrageous, like AU$500 to get the minimum bonus of AU$30. Why would anyone even consider this?

Tournaments

Unfortunately, M99 Casino doesn’t seem to feature any tournaments at all. We’ve checked the site quite thoroughly, hoping that perhaps they can be found under a different name (after all, a lot of the terminology that can be found at M99 is very different from what you’d typically see at online casinos operating in Australia. Unfortunately, no matter how much we explored, we couldn’t find anything that resembled traditional tournaments. As such, if you’re someone who’s most interested in playing pokies competitively, this absolutely won’t be the casino for you.

Verification

Under normal circumstances, you’d need to verify your identity in order to withdraw from any online casino. We can say this with certainty because it isn’t actually up to the casino: these regulations are imposed by payment providers like Visa and MasterCard, who in turn are trying to curb money laundering and the use of casinos to fund terrorism. The one big exception is casinos that only offer crypto payments, as the decentralized nature of crypto means there isn’t one company that can control who can and can’t use it. Rendering verification meaningless.

Some crypto sites still require you to verify your identity anyway, in the interest of safety, but is M99 Casino among them? Frankly… we don’t know. Under normal circumstances, this would be written plain as day in the site’s terms and conditions, but we weren’t able to find any mention of a KYC procedure anywhere. In fact, the word “verification” isn’t mentioned once on the entire website. As such, it’s impossible for us to determine whether you’re required to verify or not when the time comes to withdraw for the first time.

Is M99 Casino Legit & safe?

Australian law can be a little bit complicated when it comes to online gambling, but for the most part, no one will care if you gamble as long as you do so at a licensed casino that is authorized to accept Australian players. There are many licenses, such as Malta or Curacao, which allow the casino to accept players from a number of different territories, including Australia. So, as long as M99 Casino had one of them, we’d consider it a step in the right direction.

The site’s home page showed no sign of any licenses (typically the details are in the footer of the casino), but if you open up any page, you’ll find an MGA logo – indicating that M99 is licensed by Malta. Great! Except… the logo is literally just an image. It’s not a link that leads to an actual license you can verify, like it’s normally done. Anyone could look up a PNG of the logo on Google and put it on their site, it doesn’t mean that it’s licensed! And with no way to verify this license, we have no choice but to conclude that M99 Casino is not only not licensed, but actively lying to its players about it.

Customer support

Oh, dear… If there’s one thing that unites all scammy casinos, it’s definitely the fact that their support services are far below the acceptable standard. This can be a huge problem because when you’re experiencing an issue, like being unable to withdraw or place wagers on certain games, you definitely need some help to get to the bottom of the issue – and let’s face it, such problems will be far more common at a site like M99. Which, in turn, makes the poor quality of the support far more apparent.

M99 doesn’t seem to offer any option to contact them except for a live chat you can access from the bottom of the page. Unfortunately, when we reached out to them, the agent we spoke to was extremely obtuse. They kept copy/pasting the same message, didn’t seem to know what we were asking, and at no point even bothered to answer our questions. That’s when it occurred to us that we were speaking to a chat bot and not a real person. Typically you can get out of a bot’s grasp by typing gibberish until it gives up and connects you to a human, but that didn’t work here, as we kept getting the same copy/pasted responses, and that made us wonder whether any humans at all are actually working on M99 Casino.

Mobile casino

Nearly every single online casino we’ve ever reviewed here at CasinoAustraliaOnline has also offered a great mobile version – which makes sense when you consider the fact that nearly everyone plays via mobile instead of desktop computers these days. At a glance, it seems like M99 is no exception to that rule – they even proudly advertise a native Android app, which is quite rare!

Unfortunately, the reality of the situation is a bit more grim (which shouldn’t surprise anyone reading this review). The mobile version of M99 suffers from the same issues as its desktop counterpart, such as really poor interface and intrusive sliders and pop-up banners that constantly get in the way of the experience. As sfor the installable apk, to put it quite simply, we didn’t install it, so we can’t tell you how it performs. Installing files from sources you don’t trust can be pretty much the riskiest thing you can do on a phone, and as we’ve clearly established, there are many reasons not to trust M99 Casino.