Payforit Casino
Payforit Casino: What It Was and Where to Deposit by Phone Today
Payforit is no longer offered as a deposit method at UK online casinos. The scheme has been largely wound down, and the UK carrier-billing traffic that used to run through it now moves through Boku and Fonix. Both work the same way. The deposit lands on your phone bill or comes off your PAYG balance, with no card or bank details typed in anywhere.
I still see “payforit casino” searches landing on guides written as if the checkout button is sitting there waiting. It isn’t. It’s a pattern that shows up across the payments world every few years. A scheme grows, a couple of bigger rivals eat its share, and the name quietly stops appearing at cashiers while search traffic keeps arriving for years afterward.
Nothing here is a live walkthrough of Payforit, because there’s no live Payforit checkout left to walk through. The mechanics as they existed, the timeline gap that nobody has officially filled in, and the two providers, Boku and Fonix, now carry the pay-by-phone traffic across EE, O2, Vodafone and Three.
Reviewed by Eva de Jong, Banking & Payments Editor · Updated September 2026
What Was Payforit?
Payforit was a UK carrier-billing scheme that let players fund an online casino account by charging the deposit straight to their mobile phone account, either added to the next postpaid bill or taken instantly from a PAYG balance. It ran across the four major UK mobile networks, EE, O2, Vodafone and Three, through a layer of intermediaries accredited by the old Phone-paid Services Authority (PSA), the body that regulated UK premium-rate and phone-billed transactions before Ofcom took the role over.
There was no card, no bank login, nothing to type beyond a phone number. For a certain kind of low-stakes, mobile-first player, that was the whole draw. Payforit wasn’t a bank or an e-wallet. It was closer to a billing rail that sat between the casino’s cashier and the mobile network, moving a small sum of money in one direction only. Its strict per-transaction caps were set by the mobile network itself.
How Payforit Deposits Worked
This process is no longer available anywhere; readers who remember the old flow, or come across a stale screenshot of it, will recognise these steps.
- You picked Payforit at the casino cashier and chose a deposit amount, usually a fairly small one given the network-imposed caps.
- You entered your UK mobile number and confirmed the network it was registered to.
- The network sent a confirmation text, and you replied to authorise the charge.
- The deposit landed in your casino account instantly, while the charge itself either hit your next phone bill or came straight out of a prepaid balance.
No card number, no sort code, no waiting on a bank’s authorisation screen. That speed was the entire selling point, and it’s the same selling point Boku and Fonix lean on now, right down to the SMS-confirmation step.
Why Payforit Is No Longer Offered
Payforit as a named scheme has largely been wound down, and the company behind it (founded in Woking back in 2006) shows up in company databases as no longer active. No operator statement or regulator notice gives an exact date for when the shutters came down. The timing stays unresolved; any guide claiming an exact month or year is guessing. Company-database listings show the original Payforit business as no longer active, which is consistent with the wind-down, but a closed company record still isn’t the same thing as a dated, on-record retirement announcement.
Casinos that used to run Payforit alongside Boku have, in the observable cases, dropped Payforit and kept Boku running alone. Carrier billing across the smaller and virtual UK networks has narrowed the same way, and traffic that would once have split between two or three brands now consolidates onto Boku and Fonix. That’s a fairly ordinary outcome in a payments niche this small, where one or two providers end up handling nearly all of it.
The wind-down of Payforit and the regulatory handover are two unrelated facts. Ofcom taking over phone-paid services regulation did not cause Payforit to close, and nothing in the public record ties the two together. The handover discussion later is kept separate so the causal link doesn’t get implied where it doesn’t exist.
Top Boku Casinos
Boku is the closest live equivalent to what Payforit used to do, and it’s the one method here that’s been verified directly against our own casino database. The casinos listed here currently accept Boku as a deposit method, with full operator details available in our Boku casinos guide.
The brands above are ranked on three things: a valid gambling licence, no extra fee charged to the player on the deposit itself, and a workable payout route (Boku doesn’t handle withdrawals, so the casino needs a solid card, bank or e-wallet option on the way out). A casino that nails the deposit but leaves you stuck on withdrawals doesn’t make the cut here.
Payforit vs Its Live Successors
The shift from Payforit to its successors is a change of which rail the same four networks route traffic through. The deposit still feels identical to the player.
| Method | Status | Networks | Deposit speed | Withdrawal support | Typical limit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payforit | Retired | EE, O2, Vodafone, Three (historical) | Instant, when it was live | Never supported | Not applicable, scheme retired |
| Boku | Active | EE, O2, Vodafone, Three | Instant | Not supported | Around £30 per transaction, up to roughly £90 daily and £240-£300 monthly, figures vary by network and source |
| Fonix | Active | EE, O2, Vodafone, Three | Instant | Not supported | Up to £30 per day |
| Siru | Data not verified | Data not verified | Data not verified | Data not verified | Data not verified |
Every row that still matters caps out around £30 a transaction and never touches withdrawals, which is the part players trip over most often.
How to Deposit With Boku or Fonix Instead
If you landed here looking for the old flow, Boku and Fonix reproduce it almost exactly, just under a different brand name at the cashier and, in Fonix’s case, running underneath the same four networks that used to carry Payforit traffic. Current sites that accept Boku are listed in our Boku casinos guide.
- Choose Boku or Fonix at the casino’s deposit screen.
- Enter your UK mobile number, on EE, O2, Vodafone or Three.
- Confirm the deposit by replying to the SMS the network sends you.
- The funds appear in your casino account immediately, charged to your next bill or your PAYG balance.
The daily and monthly ceiling on how much you can move this way isn’t set by the casino. It’s set at network or billing-provider level, and no cashier setting, loyalty tier or VIP account raises it. If a site claims it can lift your carrier-billing limit, that claim doesn’t match how the rail works.
Limits, Fees and Speed Today
Both live options cap deposits fairly low by design, since carrier billing was never meant to move large sums, only to get a small, fast top-up onto an account without a card.
| Method | Per-transaction cap | Daily cap | Monthly cap | Player-side fee | Deposit speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boku | Around £30 | Up to roughly £90 | Roughly £240-£300, varies by source | None reported | Instant |
| Fonix | Varies by operator | Up to £30 | Not specified in available data | None reported | Instant |
Treat the Boku figures as a working range, since different networks and different casinos have reported slightly different numbers. Fonix is the bigger player behind the scenes, a London-based provider founded in 2006. It processed over £280 million in consumer payments in a recent year, close to a third of the entire UK SMS and carrier-billing market. On top of whatever the network itself allows, Fonix enforces its own £30-a-day mobile billing cap.
Why You Can Never Withdraw to a Phone Bill
Carrier billing, under Payforit’s old branding or under Boku and Fonix today, has never supported withdrawals. Money flows one way, from your phone account into the casino. Winnings come back out through a bank transfer, a debit card, or an e-wallet, never as a credit against your mobile bill.
This comes down to a structural limit, not a policy choice any single casino made. A mobile network can charge your account for a service, but it has no mechanism built for paying money back into it. Anyone expecting a cashout to hit their phone balance, whether they used Payforit years ago or Boku last week, is waiting on something that was never built into the system in the first place.
Security & Regulation
Phone-paid services in the UK, the regulatory category that both Payforit and its successors sit inside, changed hands recently. The Phone-paid Services Authority, which had regulated this space since 2016, was disbanded on 31 January 2025. Ofcom took over the following day, under the Regulation of Premium Rate Services Order 2024, replacing the PSA’s old Code of Practice with its own rules for the sector. That handover is purely about who regulates the billing rail; the two events simply landed in the same rough window of time, and shouldn’t be read as cause and effect. The casino side of any deposit you make with Boku or Fonix is governed separately by its own UK Gambling Commission licence, regardless of which payment method sits at the cashier. The billing rail and the casino’s licence are two different layers of oversight, and both matter, but they answer different questions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I still deposit with Payforit?
No. The scheme has been largely wound down and isn’t offered at UK online casinos anymore. Use Boku or Fonix instead; they work the same way, straight off your phone bill or PAYG balance, through the same four UK networks.
What replaced Payforit?
Boku and Fonix are the live UK carrier-billing providers casinos use now, running across EE, O2, Vodafone and Three, with Fonix also handling a large share of the UK’s wider SMS-billing traffic. For a complete overview of other payment methods, see our payment guide.
Why did Payforit stop working?
No official reason or exact date has ever been published. What’s visible is that operators who ran Payforit alongside Boku have dropped Payforit and kept Boku, and the wider carrier-billing market has consolidated onto Boku and Fonix.
Can I withdraw money to my phone bill?
No. Carrier billing, then and now, has never supported withdrawals. Deposits go in one direction only; winnings come out through a bank transfer, card or e-wallet instead.
Is mobile or carrier billing still regulated?
Yes. Ofcom regulates phone-paid services in the UK since 1 February 2025, when it took over from the Phone-paid Services Authority. The casino itself carries a separate UK Gambling Commission licence, on top of that.
Which UK casinos accept Boku today?
See the list above, pulled from our own casino database and updated as operators change their accepted payment methods.
Relevant news
Online casino winner’s stories
There are more than 2000 online casinos offering the players some incredible prize money. You…
Online Casinos in Australia
Discover the Thrills of Australian Online Casinos Australians have a natural love for gambling,…
Bob Casino player becomes a millionaire!
[two-cols-first]In April 2018, a Bob Casino player turned a single spin on Reactoonz into a…
No KYC Casinos
No KYC Casinos The landscape of online gambling has undergone a significant transformation with the…
Casino Taxes On Winnings 2026
Calculator, tax documents, and poker chips representing casino winnings tax calculations In the US, every…
Casino Licensing Explained: What a License Actually Does and How to Verify One
Casino licensing document and official seal representing gambling regulator compliance A casino license is a…
