Surfplay Casino

Surfplay Casino Review

What can we say, us Aussies know a thing or two about surfing – so how could we resist checking out this particular casino? It’s like it’s practically inviting us to review it! Well, we’ve never been ones to back out of a challenge, and even though we’re grommets when it comes to actual surfing, we’re veterans in exploring every nook and cranny of online casinos!

So, putting our surfboards aside and grabbing our magnifying glass, we closely examined Surfplay’s collection of pokies, checked its bonuses, read its terms of service (and bonus conditions) top to bottom, and, of course, did a little background checking to see if it’s a legitimate casino. Catch the wave and come join us!

Bonuses

Welcome Bonus – 100% Match up to AU$3,000 + 100 Free Spins

With so many online casinos out there, it’s easy for players to suffer from analysis paralysis and ultimately not sign up anywhere. That’s precisely why every site offers a big welcome bonus, as if to say “hey, we know you’ve looked at many other sites, but if you choose ours, you’ll get this thing on us!” And we’ve got to admit: Surfplay makes a very persuasive argument, especially since it offers not one, but three different welcome bonuses in a package.

For the moment, we’ll just focus on the first of these offers, since that’s the one you’ll get when you make your first deposit. Putting down at least AU$45 while you’re buying chips for the first time will reward you with a 100% match up to a staggering AU$3,000. Sure, the match percentage could stand to be a little higher, but there’s no denying that the massive cash bonus will make high rollers very happy! And if you weren’t planning on getting anywhere near that amount, don’t worry, even a minimal deposit will also receive 100 free spins!

Sounds exciting? Well, there are a few conditions you’ll have to keep in mind. For starters, during your first deposit (which, remember, must be at least AU$45), you’ll have to use the bonus code SURF1. After that, you’ll have to wager through your full deposit once before you can receive your free spins. Finally, you’ll need to play through your cash bonus AND your free spins winnings x40 times each to withdraw them. Admittedly, these are some tough requirements, but it comes with the territory of such bonuses.

Additional Welcome Bonuses

As mentioned earlier, Surfplay Casino will reward its new players with three distinct bonuses, each tied to one of their first three deposits. We already covered the first one above, so let’s focus on the remaining two and see what else you’ll get as part of Surfplay’s welcome package!

The second deposit bonus will be much smaller in practically every way: this time, you’ll only get a 50% match up to AU$1,500, alongside 75 free spins. Meanwhile, the third will go right back to 100% up to AU$3,000, but without any free spins. Even though these offers are obviously inferior to the first, they’re still pretty decent – we dare say that each one surpasses the entire welcome package of some other casinos we’ve reviewed.

In terms of bonus conditions, all three parts of the package share the same requirements: a minimum deposit of AU$45 and then x40 wagering requirement. The only difference is the bonus code you’ll have to input during each deposit, as this time it’ll be SURF2 for the second bonus and SURF3 for the 3rd. Pretty obvious, but worth mentioning anyway!

Reload Promotions at Surfplay Casino

Although the welcome package of Surfplay is extremely strong, the same can’t be said about its reload bonuses. In fact, this is arguably one of its weakest aspects because, well… there aren’t any. That’s right, you won’t encounter a single recurring bonus here. Instead, you’ll be left relying on limited-time promotions, typically for events like Christmas, Halloween, or Black Friday. Sure, you get one of these every month, but other casinos will give you a reload bonus that refreshes every week!

Admittedly, the casino claims that it sends promotions and offers to players directly over e-mail, but that’s also not something that we like. A reload bonus will be available very regularly, and players can rest easy knowing that they can claim it, say, every weekend. On the other hand, an unexpected offer sent over e-mail (and, presumably, with an expiration date) can create unnecessary stress for the player, pressuring them into claiming it and making a deposit even if they didn’t feel prepared to do so. It’s a predatory tactic called “fear of missing out”, or FOMO, and it’s well worth criticizing.

Games

Although a casino’s bonuses may be what gets players to sign up, ultimately it’s their games which get them to stay – and on that front, Surfplay is really decent! Not perfect, we’ve got our fair share of issues with this section (which we’ll discuss below as we explore the pokies and live sections in more detail), but what’s here sohuld be more than enough for most players. One thing we especially like is the wide diversity of different titles: beyond the two categories we just mentioned, you’ll also find sports bettin and instant win games – the former of which is especially well made. If you’re a player who likes betting on blackjack just as much as on football, this just might be the casino for you!

Pokies

Right off the bat, it’s worth noting that Surfplay doesn’t have the biggest selection of games and providers ever – in total, you’ll gain access to about fiftyish different providers. It’s not a small number in and of itself, but it’s also less than what some other casinos offer. However, Surfplay excels in two areas: quality and categorization.

The quality part is obvious – you’ll find the games of many excellent providers here, including IGTech, BGaming, Tom Horn, Playson, Booming Games, Evoplay, etc. Sure, a few bigger providers are missing, such as Pragmatic Play, but most of the ones you won’t find here are either very obscure or, to put it bluntly, not very good. Still, these names won’t mean anything to you unless you’re already familiar with online casinos, and that’s where categorization comes into play! You can very easily filter out the games by feature (like Jackpots) or by popularity. Surfplay even offers the option to just display the games with the highest RTP (meaning the ones that hold the highest potential of rewarding you), which is a rare feature we haven’t encountered often!

Live casino

Although Surfplay’s pokies generally left a really good impression, its live dealer section… did not. Right off the bat, you’ll notice just how desolate it seems compared to the pokies, to the point where you’ll only find the games of three different provides here. What’s worse, those 3 are fairly obscure: TVbet, Iconic21, and Elcasino. It’d be one thing if we just had Evolution Gaming and Pragmatic Live, but these three barely have any games worth talking about!

The overwhelming majority of rooms here will be for blackjack and roulette, with a few more for baccarat – which, granted, will be enough for many of you, but those looking for more obscure and niche titles will be left wanting. Although there are a few rooms for them (like sic bo or andar bahar), there really isn’t much variety here, and entire categories of live casino titles (like game shows) are completely missing.

Deposits & Withdrawals

Many players underestimate the importance of payment methods, somehow not realizing that they are the factor which determines whether you can make a deposit or not (and in turn, claim bonuses and play games). Even if it’s not as glamorous as those things, it’s still important for you to take a peek at the payments page just in case it’s looking a little weird… like Surfplay’s.

You’ll be able to deposit with Visa and bank transfer, as well as Maestro – but strangely enough, not MasterCard, which isn’t available for either deposits or withdrawals. Besides the banking methods, you can use a few e-wallets which are mostly on the obscure side as far as us Aussies are concerned – seriously does anyone on this continent use Zimpler? And if you were thinking about just using crypto or a pre-paid voucher (like Neosurf), forget about it, because neither of those options is supported here. See, we told you things are looking weird!

Withdrawal time

Given the fact that, as far as we can see, you can withdraw using any of the methods also available for deposit, it’s only fair for you to wonder which ones will bring you your hard-earned winnings the fastest. Before we discuss each type of payment method individually, we have to point out that Surfplay will take a few days to process your withdrawal request and dispatch it. That wait time is inevitable – the payment method will determine how quickly you get the money after that.

You can use a credit card, bank transfer, or e-wallet to withdraw – and out of these types, bank transfer will be by far the slowest. It can take an additional 10 days for the transaction to be reflected in your account, which can make the total wait time as long as two weeks! Credit cards will be faster, but will still have a processing time of about 3-4 days, bringing the total to about a week. Finally, although e-wallets aren’t as convenient as banking methods, they’re pretty fast, and a transaction dispatched via Ecopayz or Sticpay should arrive momentarily.

VIP Program

Given the fact that Surfplay doesn’t have any reload promotions, it’s vitally important for it to reward long-time players in some other ways. Besides the limited-time promotions (which we already mentioned in our bonuses section up above, you’ll also have the chance to receive further bonuses from Surfplay’s VIP program, which will reward you with cash in several different ways.

First off, as you play pokies at this casino, you’ll accumulate points which will increase your level at various milestones. Each milestone will bring you a small bonus ranging from 75 free spins for getting to level 1 all the way to AU$3,000 for reaching the final level 6. On top of that, the later levels will give you a daily cashback on your losses which starts at 6% at level 2 and ends at 10% at level 6.

But these 6 bonuses aren’t the only ones you can get. Instead, your points will keep accumulating, and can eventually be spent in a special store so you can keep buying new bonuses… or so the terms and conditions of the program state, anyway. In reality, we couldn’t find that store anywhere, but it’s very possible that it unlocks after you’ve reached level 1 in the program.

Tournaments

Surfplay doesn’t sport a ton of tournaments, but what it has should be satisfactory for your average player. Most of what you’ll find on its tourneys page will be Drops & Wins-style promos, which are less traditional tournaments and more bonuses given out by the pokie provider instead of the casino. And since they’re not directly tied to the site, these types of tournaments will be available at many different casinos that carry the same pokies. You can play them as a member of Surfplay, but also as a member of other casinos.

From time to time though, Surfplay will offer a tourney all its own, and although these competitions are much rarer (not to mention with significantly smaller pots), they’re still very appreciated. As far as we can tell, the tournaments often coincidence with holidays like Christmas or Halloween, and so the games that participate in them are selected based on that theme.

Verification

If you’re a brand new casino player, you might be shocked when your first withdrawal request inevitably gets denied. What happened? Did Surfplay just scam you?! Well, no, not really – actually, this is something that happens at every casino to every player. What actually happened was that you triggered the verification process, and now won’t be able to not just withdraw, but also make deposits or place bets until you complete it.

But what is it? As you may know, online casinos have long had trouble with individuals using them for money laundering, and verification is a way to prevent that. By tying your real-world identity to your casino account, the casino (and, in turn, the authorities – if it comes to that) can monitor how much you’re depositing and withdrawing, which in turn can help them identify patterns of money laundering. If you’re just playing games, though, nobody will bother you!

Is Surfplay Casino Legit & safe?

It’s completely natural for you to be concerned about whether the casino you’re considering signing up for is legit or not – after all, Australia’s online gambling regulations are garbage, which means that our government won’t do a thing to help you if you’re scammed. It’s up to us, and make no mistake, we at CasinoAustraliaOnline have left no stone unturned in uncovering the truth! And the verdict is in: Surfplay is… pretty safe!

Granted, we can’t promise with 100% certainty that the site will not scam you, just like we can’t for any other casino. But there are no obvious red flags, no reason for us to feel like Surfplay is trustworthy. It’s owned and operated by a very well established company with many casinos under its belt, it’s fully licensed, it has a great reputation among players… Sure, there are some things about it that we don’t like (such as how each deposit must be wagered through x3 times so you can withdraw winnings as opposed to just x1 like at most casinos), but those aren’t nearly enough to make us distrust it!

Customer support

What’s an online casino without a customer support option? Whether you’ve got a serious issue that is impossible to fix on your own, or you’re simply curious about a few things that we haven’t touched upon in our already quite long review, there are no better people to ask than the support team! You can reach out to them in two ways: via email, or via live chat which can be accessed from the menu on the left on both mobile and desktop.

In all honesty, the support team was okay, at least the representative we connected with did a decent enough job. Can we say we’re in awe of their amazing knowledge and problem-solving ability? No. The chat was slow, and even then, some of our questions couldn’t be answered (for example, about the VIP program’s store – something we still aren’t sure about even after many hours investigating the casino). But they did answer most of our questions, and although that may sound like faint praise, it’s better than what we’ve seen at certain other casino sites!

Mobile casino

Let’s not kid ourselves here: most casino gamers prefer to play on mobile over desktop – in fact, their number isn’t even remotely close to the desktop players. Once upon a time, we had downloadable PC apps for the biggest casino sites, while now, casinos like Surfplay look like they’re being made for phones even on desktop! Indeed, although the interface is certainly a little clunky on a computer, it fits like a glove on the smaller, vertical screen of a phone. This is objectively the superior version of the casino, and you don’t even need to download an app to access it, since opening it in your browser will automatically deliver the mobile web app to you. This means that you can play it on both iOS and Android devices, with little to no restrictions when it comes to model or age!