National Casino

National Casino Review

We Australians often draw the short end of the stick when it comes to online casino sites – we rarely have any that are just our own, and the few we do have tend to suck. As such, we have to rely on international casinos which also happen to accept Aussie players. And ironically enough, despite its name, National Casino happens to be one of those international sites where Australians are welcome. But does it do anything to earn our presence?

To discover this, we decided to thoroughly investigate the casino top to bottom – starting from the site’s bonuses and games and then ending at much more obscure aspects like the customer support system, VIP program, and the casino license. Once our investigation is complete, we will draw a conclusion to let you know whether, in our opinion, National Casino beats our own Australian national casinos!

Bonuses

Welcome Bonus – 100% Match up to AU$500 + 100 Free Spins

Despite the fact that basically all casino gamers join a site for its games, the reason they actually select the “Sign Up” button usually has nothing to do with them. Instead, it’s the big welcome offer which gives them that big push. On that front, although National Casino has attempted to put its best foot forward, its offering might not be enough to get the attention of veteran players.

Once you sign up and put down a first deposit of at least AU$30, you’ll receive a 100% match up to AU$500, which is… okay, but is nothing to write home about. Most other sites will net you at least a 4-digit sum, and although many players won’t ever place a deposit that gets that far, high rollers are likely to be disappointed by the low amount. The 100 free spins you’ll also get alongside a deposit do help matters somewhat, but not enough to dramatically turn the tides.

Arguably the worst part of this offer, though, are the wagering requirements, which are stuck at x40 for both the match bonus and the free spins winnings. Those aren’t the highest requirements we’ve ever seen or anything like that, but given the fact that most casinos have wagering requirements of about x30 to x35, you’ll be playing through your bonus cash quite a few more times than usual.

Additional Welcome Bonuses

Most casino sites have a welcome package containing bonuses for your first 3-4 deposits, and National Casino does too… sort of. It has a bonus just for your first and second deposits, but it also offers an alternative first deposit offer if the first one we described above isn’t entirely to your liking. That first one is the normal bonus, while the second one is the high roller offer which you can get if you deposit at least AU$500. It’s a little steep, but makes sense in the context of the previous bonus having a limit of AU$500.

The high-roller bonus is also 100%, but this time up to AU$3,000. On top of that, you lose the 100% free spins, which honestly sours the whole thing. This could, and should, have been a unified bonus of 100% match up to AU$3,000 + 100 free spins, but the way it’s formed punishes high rolling players by depriving them of spins. And trust us, you do not want to punish your biggest spenders right off the bat (or ever).

Regardless of which bonus you pick, you’ll be able to claim a second deposit bonus which will give you a 50% match up to AU$1,000 alongside 50 free spins on the Johnny Cash pokie, further proving that yes, it is in fact possible to give players a big match bonus and some free spins at the same time. In any case, both of these bonuses will have the same wagering requirements as the welcome offer, specifically x40 for the match offer and wagering requirements.

Reload Promotions at National Casino

Once you’ve used up both welcome bonuses, the only thing left to do if you want to keep playing with bonus funds is to use some reload promotions! These offers (which will refresh every time they’re used, hence the name) typically come in multiples, but National Casino only has one of them, which you can claim every Friday.

On that day, a deposit of at least AU$30 will net you a 50% match up to AU$250, alongside 100 spins on the BGaming pokie Book of Cats. And are we crazy, or is this recurring bonus a better one compared to the one-time only second deposit bonus? Sure, you only get a bonus amount of up to AU$250 (as opposed to AU$1,000), but it’s not like people would be depositing AU$2,000 on the regular. This AU$250 offer is more than enough for 99.99% of players.

Beyond that, the site also has a “Thrill of the Spin” promotion with every deposit. Whenever you buy some chips, you’ll have a chance to win some prizes, like extra bonus cash and free spins. Are you likely to win? Probably not. But hey, if you’ve ever wanted to gamble while you deposit money to gamble with, this site is for you.

Games

In terms of games (which, let’s face it, is the real reason why most of you are here), National Casino is admittedly pretty decent. It doesn’t blow us away or anything: in fact, we noticed that it’s lacking several features we’ve found on other sites, like bingo or sports betting. But what is here is a plentiful selection of pokies, a pretty decent live dealer section, and even lots of instant win titles (which here are called “fast games”) like Aviator, Plinko, or Chicken Tap. Regardless of your taste, you’ll probably find something of value here even with the notable omissions in mind.

Pokies

It’s pretty rare to find a good pokie section at an Aussie casino – many big, popular providers (like NetEnt) refuse to accept wagers from Aussie players, which means that the amount of games any casino operating in Australia can display will be inherently smaller than its international counterparts. Even so, National has built quite a decent selection of providers both big and small, ensuring that most players should be able to find at least a handful of titles they’ll latch onto.

From the bigger names, the more notable ones include BGaming, Yggdrasil, Pragmatic Game, and Felix Gaming, and as for the smaller companies, you’ll find games from Zillion, Slotopia, and Bitpunch. None of these are exactly ‘hidden gems’, but it’s still nice to see a good selection of titles across a variety of providers and offering a number of different features (like Megaways). It’ll take some poking around to find the right pokie for you, but if that doesn’t scare you, you’ll be pretty happy at National.

Live casino

Look, not everyone cares about spinning reels or playing Plinko – some people want the real games, like blackjack! And if you’re one of those people, we’re happy to report that you’ll find plenty to love here at National Casino! Admittedly, the selection is a bit scarce, especially in terms of providers: most rooms are offered by Pragmatic Live, with a handful of smaller companies like BeterLive and Iconic21 showing up for cameos. Evolution Gaming and most other providers are conspicuously absent.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of rooms to choose from even as-is. Obviously the main ones (blackjack, roulette, and baccarat) are plentiful and have no shortage of variants, such as French Roulette. The choices get a little more limited when we get to the niche titles like Sic Bo, but even there you’ll typically find at least one or two rooms per game. Just like the games section as a whole, the live dealer section is decent without blowing us away.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Playing at an online casino inevitably means having to use a payment processor to deposit (and eventually withdraw) your money – alas, we still haven’t invented an online banking technology that lets you throw money at the screen. That’s why you need to rely on pre-paid solutions, such as credit cards and e-wallets, and although National Casino could do better in that regard, it generally supports most payment options available in Australia.

You can use not just credit cards like Visa and MasterCard, but also e-wallets like Jeton, Neteller, and eZeeWallet. On top of that, you can use all three major pre-paid vouchers here, speifically Neosurf, Paysafecard, and CashtoCode. With that said, one area where National Casino really falters is crypto deposits, which have been gaining more and more popularity when it comes to online gambling. You can only use Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum as of the time of writing, which is very insufficient. At the same time though, these are the biggest cryptocurrencies out there, so chances are if you’re into crypto you already have a wallet for at least one of them.

Withdrawal time

You might have noticed that National Casino allows you to withdraw up to AU$6,000 per day – which is one of the most generous maximum withdrawal limits we’ve reviewed here at CasinoAustraliaOnline. What the site won’t tell you, at least not right away, is that it won’t pay you that money right away. You’ll need to wait about 3 days for the payment to be processed and then dispatched. That’s not very long, but it often surprises people who expect the money in their bank account right away.

And speaking of bank accounts, if you choose to withdraw via that, you’ll be waiting even longer – banks do their own processing and verification independent of the casinos, so it could be over 10 days before you see your money reflected! Credit cards won’t take as long, but it can still be between 3 and 5 days. If you don’t want to wait that extra time, we strongly recommend withdrawing via e-wallet (like Skrill) or crypto (like Litecoin).

VIP Program

For the most part, National’s VIP program is very conventional, and works precisely the way you’d imagine it does. Every time you place a wager using real money, you’ll accumulate a little bit of XP – and once your XP bar is full, you level up, earning yourself a reward. This incentivizes players to stick with National for the long haul, while also keeping them on relatively equal footing (since all it counts are the wagers you made, not how much you deposited).

The one major difference compared to most other casino sites lies in the available rewards. National’s competitors will typically give you passive perks as you level up, such as increased withdrawal limits or a cashback on your losses. Here though, you’ll just get a one-time bonus ranging from 25 free spins for level 1 all the way up to AU$160,000 for level 15 (though of course, you’d need to wager quite a lot more than that to get this bonus). Frankly, we aren’t fans of this approach. We prefer rewards that genuinely enhance the player’s experience, and don’t just offer a one-and-done prize which soon vanishes without a trace.

Tournaments

National’s pokie collection may not be the best of all time, but it’s still more than enough for it to allow for plenty of tournaments to be held within its virtual halls! … Well, okay, that’s not quite true, since you’ll typically only have access to a handful of tourneys, in our opinion about 2-3 at any given point. Furthermore, those tournaments will be very short (we didn’t see one go over a day the whole time we were researching this casino), and they’ll all be for pokies, without the option to also compete in live casino tourneys.

Does that mean we’re complaining? Absolutely not! The selection is certainly unconventional, and there are a few things we wish had been done differently, but what is here is still very satisfying. The frequently changing tournaments not only allow you to wait until games you’re actually interested in are in rotation, but they also ensure high rollers never hog the leaderboards. Even if a particular tournament gets ‘usurped’ by people who are wagering way more than you’re able to, and thus scoring much higher winnings, you simply need to wait a day to try your luck again.

Verification

Every online casino site, however legal (or not) will make you verify your identity at some point, typically when you’re making your first withdrawal. Why? Because if they don’t verify who you are before they send you money, they’ll be cut off by the payment providers (like Visa and MasterCard), which means they won’t be able to receive any money as deposits. Scary prospect for a fledgling casino site, wouldn’t you say?

The reason why verification is important is to prevent money laundering, and collect information about each player that can later be subpoenaed by law enforcement if someone is suspected of laundering money. If you aren’t doing that, then you have nothing to worry about… well, except for having to give up a bit of your privacy, which is a bummer. At least the actual process of verification won’t be very complicated, since all you need to do is present a form of ID and something to confirm your current address (like a delivery receipt or utility bill).

Is National Casino Legit & safe?

In its “About Us” section, National Casino claims to be, and we quote directly here, “a fully licensed and regulated venue”. Amazing, that’s exactly how it should be – any unlicensed casinos answer to nobody, which means that if you get scammed, you don’t have any recourse to get the money owed to you. Except… there’s no license certificate to be found anywhere on National’s website. They don’t even tell you where the casino is supposedly licensed!

So, we at CasinoAustraliaOnline decided to run our own investigation, as we always do. We checked every public license registry that we could think of (Curacao, Anjouan, Tobique, you name it), and we’re sad to say that we didn’t find National Casino’s name in any of them. Although there are a few explanations for this, the likeliest one is simply that the site’s claim about it being “fully licensed and regulated” is a big, fat lie. Although Australia doesn’t have any laws prohibiting gambling at unlicensed casinos, we would still strongly recommend against betting here – doubly so because of the dishonest nature of the claims made by National’s creators.

Customer support

Sooner or later, many casino gamers need to send a message to a site’s support team. Some do it for benign reasons: wanting to inquire about certain bonuses or information listed on the site. Others do so with far more serious concerns: canceled withdrawals, frozen accounts, all sorts of unpleasantness. As such, players need to trust on consistent, reliable support… which, sadly, isn’t present here at Naitonal Casino.

The live chat, which was the first thing we tested (and the first thing most players will use when contacting support) was a joke. We didn’t get a single straight answer out of the agent we were connected with, despite waiting quite a few minutes for each response. Then we tried to send an email, which was luckily very easy thanks to National Casino’s ticketing system. Rather unluckily though, the response was similarly useless, with the staff refusing to acknowledge even questions that should be simple to answer, like who the casino is licensed by. Don’t expect a reasonable response if you approach them with some kind of big issue.

Mobile casino

Let’s face it: if you’re a gambler in this day and age, you’re either playing at land-based casinos, or you’re playing on your phone – and if you’re here, it’s probably the latter! For all its faults though, National Casino actually has a pretty decent mobile site. It’s fast, it’s elegant, it’s functional, and most importantly, it’s compatible with a wide variety of devices.

That’s because National Casino doesn’t have a “casino app” that you can download and install on your phone like you would, say, TikTok. You’ll be relying on its web version, accessible through your mobile browser of choice. That shouldn’t deter you, though! Said web version is pretty great, visually identical to a downloaded app while also having very high compatibility with both Android and Apple devices.