Why Choose Online Casino Geeks New Zealand?
We don’t want to blow our own trumpet too much, but if we didn’t, then how would you know that you can trust Online Casino Geeks? There are two key reasons behind the creation of Online Casino Geeks casino review website for New Zealand players.
Firstly, we love online casino games and online gambling. That leads us to the second reason we came online, and that is because we want to help others enjoy the same experience of the online casino industry that we have had. Our team is made up of casino geeks, and everyone in the team is dedicated to helping you understand the online casino industry in NZ. We enjoy reviewing new cryptocurrency casinos, online casinos, and as natural bargain hunters, we relish finding the best bonus deals. Not only does the research help us, but it also helps you.
The satisfaction of seeing our website traffic increase week-by-week is second to none. It is confirmation that our casino reviews and news reports are useful to New Zealand players. Our goal is always to give you accurate information about every casino that passes our due diligence tests so it can be reviewed and published here on our website. If you do not see an online casino review here, it is because we did not feel it suited our readership.
Whether you are a new or an experienced online casino player, our reviews help. We do not overwhelm you with useless information and instead keep our reviews short and sweet including all the important details. This way you can take away all the important information and shortlist online casinos in NZ that you feel will suit your style of play.
What Do Our New Zealand Casino Reviews Include?
- Casino Rating Out of 5
- Casinos that accept NZ$
- Casino with promos that apply to NZ players
- Which software developers have games at the casino
- An overview of all virtual RNG casino games
- An overview of the live casino section
- An overview of the mobile casino capabilities
- Which deposit/withdrawal methods NZ player can use
- Which licensing authority keeps the casino in check
- Our experience of customer service and self-help
- Pros and cons
Online Casino Geeks’ NZ Casino Review Criteria
Our reviews aim to differentiate online casinos available to casino players in New Zealand. At first glance, some NZ casinos appear to offer very similar functionalities, games, and bonuses, however, when you get down to the bare bones of the terms and conditions, FAQs, and licensing – casinos that are seemingly similar at first glance are quite different.
Rather than you having to list and research the hundreds of online casinos available to New Zealand casino players and then find what makes each one different, we have done all the hard work for you and listed the very best of them here on the Online Casino Geeks website.
All you need to do is open up our reviews and read all the important information such as bonus info, casino history, games available, deposit/withdrawal methods, and more. We guarantee that all our casino reviews include accurate and helpful content handpicked by our dedicated casino research team who are experts at dissecting online casino T&Cs, FAQs, and casino pages.
Important information included in our reviews includes:
- Casino inauguration
- Software developers
- Game types available
- Bonus/Promotion information
- Wagering requirements for bonuses
- Live dealer tables
- Mobile responsiveness
- Withdrawal and deposit options
- Live chat, email, telephone support
- The casino’s plus points and downsides
Cryptocurrency Review Criteria
Playing online casino games using cryptocurrencies as well as making crypto deposits and withdrawals has become a popular trend in New Zealand. Our cryptocurrency casino reviews explain exactly how New Zeland casino players can find and play casino games using digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Crypto only casinos are casinos that only accept cryptocurrency. Some of these casinos use a private blockchain ecosystem and a digital currency unique to the casino. Other cryptocurrency casinos will only accept BTC or ETH which are known as BTC casinos or ETH casinos respectively. For example, ETH casinos use custom smart contracts from the Ethereum ecosystem and therefore the casino cannot accept fiat currencies or BTC.
Fiat and crypto casinos accept both fiat and cryptos as well as host games on which players can place bets using crypto. The most common digital currencies widely accepted by this type of casino include BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC, and DODGE.
Fiat casinos only allow games to be played using NZD, but some have opened the doors to cryptocurrency players. However, once the crypto is deposited, it must be converted to NZD.
As for the rest of the cryptocurrency casino review, the same review process is used to determine. Games, software developers, casino history, bonus information and wagering requirements, mobile casino capabilities, as well as areas such as customer service options are all included.
Four Ways We Vet Casinos Worthy Of a Casino Review
Our casino reviews for New Zealand players are the result of strategic review processes used to breakdown every area of an online casino designed to give its members a smooth and entertaining experience. However, before an online casino qualifies for a review, it needs to meet certain criteria.
Mobile Casino Functionality: No online casino is complete without offering mobile casino gameplay. We rarely review a casino that does not offer mobile functionality. Android, iOS, and Windows Mobile players are all considered. We will explain whether the casino has a downloadable app or if you can play games on your mobile via your web browser using instant play HTML5 technology deployed by the casino.
Trustworthiness/Safety/Licensing: The most important asset an online casino can have is its trustworthiness and safety. There is little point in playing at an online casino that is not safe because your account will be compromised and you could lose your balance as well as personal information. Plus, if the casino’s gaming results are no fair or rigged, then this defeats the object of playing at the casino.
Fair Deposits and Withdrawals: If an online casino is renowned for restricting its withdrawals, long pending times, and failure to process withdrawals, then we will not review it. As a result, every online casino we review has been tested for withdrawals and researched thoroughly to see if it is on any blacklists or has an excessive number of player complaints.
Customer Services: When a casino’s customer service department is non-existent, fails to answer emails in a timely response, or provides automated and unhelpful responses, we will not review it. We have also been known to eliminate casino reviews from our website for consistently failing to meet acceptable customer service standards.
No casino makes it to our website for failing any of these four points. As a result, you can guarantee every casino review on our website is available for mobile play, is safe to play at, cares about your privacy, uses SSL encryption, provides safe financial transactions, provides sufficient customer care services, and it is licensed by a trusted authority.
Important Terminology Used To In Our Casino Reviews?
When you are reading our New Zealand casino reviews there is certain terminology we use that can be expanded upon further. However, the idea of our reviews to keep the information condensed but informative without repeating the same information. We explain some of that terminology here by giving you a complete description of each term we use regularly.
- Consumer Rights and Privacy
Consumer rights and privacy laws are issued by the governments or jurisdictions the casino is licensed and its company operates. However, New Zealand law is not used by most online casinos. The good news is that there is a global licensing authority called the Malta Gaming Authority (MGA). The organisation is governed by EU laws.
Luckily the EU encourages non-citizens to do business with EU companies by covering anyone outside of the EU with its privacy and consumer rights laws. If you ever have a dispute or believe a casino has acted outside the parameters of consumer rights or privacy laws, you can contact the EU e-comm disputes team or MGA disputes departments.
Any complaints must be dealt with, and EU law will be used to resolve the dispute amicably on other sides by using mediation and in some cases legal action.
- Security & Integrity
Casinos licensed by the MGA are tested thoroughly by third-party teams and internal MGA testing authorities for security and integrity. All casinos must use HTTPS encryption, employ a minimum of 128-bit encrypted SSL connections, especially for financial transactions, and use advanced firewalls for network security so hackers cannot bring down or access the system.
Furthermore, the integrity of the casino is tested using third-party random number generator (RNG) algorithm experts to ensure all game results are fair.
Another organisation called eCOGRA tests casino RNGs and publishes the results publicly. This company is called This same organisation also offers dispute resolution/mediation services. If a casino is a member of eCOGRA, then we will make sure we mention it so look out for this company name!
- Financial Security
All MGA licensed casinos must prove that the company offering online casino gaming services to players in New Zealand is financially secure. It must be able to pay out winnings – especially large progressive jackpot wins. On top of this, the casino must open a bank account that is separate from the casino’s day to day operations. This bank account keeps the total balance of all casino member’s casino accounts.
This is a very similar rule financial institutions that hold people’s savings must abide by. If the casino or the company that owns the casino every goes into administration or starts to liquidate, casino members’ account balances are safe and can be paid back to members immediately.
- Promotes Responsible Gambling
Responsible gambling tools are made available on all the website we review. We do not necessarily mention what is available in our review, but almost every casino we review offers tools that can help you cool down if you are getting angry and to help you limit the amount of money you spend gambling. The most useful tools are the self-exclusion options that allow you to prevent yourself from making real money bets for a set period known as a ‘cool down’.
If you need further help or believe you may be developing a gambling problem, then most casinos offer links to websites that specialise in helping people with gambling addictions. You will be able to take a test that helps you determine whether or not you may show signs of problem gambling.
How Do We Review Casino Games?
Most casino players would firstly look at the games an online casino has to offer, but as we mentioned above, there is little point in playing at a casino that does not offer a fair gaming platform. This is why we have only reached the topic of casino games this far into our guide to online casino reviews. Once we know the casino is safe, trustworthy, fair, and offers a casino gaming environment that puts the player’s interests first, we then start to look at the games offered by the casino.
Software & Gaming Providers
When online casinos were first available in New Zealand, there were only a handful of software developers. These are the gaming developers that design the numerous online video slot games, video poker games, blackjack, roulette, scratch cards, lotto, and other virtual casino games. There are also software developers that host live dealer suites so you can stream live games via webcams and place bets. Today there are more than 100.
Our casino reviews provide an overview of the casino software developers contributing games to the online casino being evaluated. We mention the most well-known as well as up and coming software providers so you can get a feel for just how diverse a gaming experience the casino has to offer. The more software developers a casino has, the more diverse its gaming collection.
However, some casino players prefer casinos that specialise in a select few casino software developers. This is because the casino will then offer the full suite of desktop and mobile casino games produced by that particular software developer; whereas casinos with a huge list of software developers may not host every game from a given gaming developer.
Examples of popular casino software developers:
- Microgaming
- NetEnt
- Red Tiger Gaming
- Quickspin
- Evolution Gaming
- Betsoft
Virtual (RNG) Video Slots and Table Games
Virtual casino games today are first-class. New Zealand casino players can play them at their leisure without being rushed by a dealer or croupier, the table is private, and they use advanced RNGs that provide fair and random results. They offer low, medium, and high stakes bet limits, and they can be played on almost any device. It is difficult to ask for more than this as a casino gamer.
We make sure that we cover the options available to you at the online casino we review. The software providers, the type of games available, and we often provide a count of the number of each game type that can be played. We provide the rough number of video slots, blackjack and roulette tables and variations, video poker, and progressive jackpot games available. Plus we include a small sample of the most popular gaming titles.
Video Slots: There are thousands of online slot game available to New Zealanders. You can play slots on your smartphone, desktop, laptop, and tablet devices. There are video slots, classic slots, and progressive jackpot slots. We make sure you get an overview of the types of slot games the casino has to offer in the RNG games section.
Card Games: Blackjack, baccarat, pontoon, red dog, and poker games are all popular casino games. Our casino reviews cover the variations of blackjack, poker, and baccarat hosted at the casino.
Table Games: Aside from card games, there are numerous virtual table games available. Roulette is the most popular and comes with several variations such as European, French, US, Auto, American, and multi-wheel roulette. Plus, other table games such as craps and sic-bo are popular. We always make sure we include all these games in our casino reviews if the casino hosts any of them.
Video Poker: Not all online casinos offer video poker games. However, when they do, we make sure we mention the casino provides video poker and sometimes we will also include some of the variations available in our review.
Scratch Cards: Scratch games are becoming increasingly popular. They are easy to play and very popular with the older generation. Not all online casinos offer scratch cards, but if we find them available at a casino we are reviewing, then we will briefly cover what is available.
Lotto/Bingo: Some online casinos offer a completely separate lotto and lottery section to their casinos while some also offer lotto/bingo games within their ‘other games section’ or mix games such as Keno in with their table games. We always make sure we cover this topic even if it is briefly mentioned in our reviews.
Device Compatibility
Almost all online casino games today are designed with multi-platform functionality.
Whether you prefer to play live casino or virtual RNG operated games you will find that nearly all casino games developed today can be played on on the following devices:
- Desktop & Laptop
- Tablet & Smartphone
- TV
- iOS/Android/Windows Mobile
- Mini Games-Consoles
When our review team is testing an online casino, the reviewer will sign up and log in. Once logged in, one of the first things he/she will do is check the casino’s responsive behaviour by testing how well the casino performs on a desktop, smartphone, and tablet.
- Opening the games sections
- Testing the live casino and games
- Testing virtual tables and video games
- Opening the support chat options
- Browsing FAQs
- Testing the cashier section
- Managing the casino account
If the casino uses an app, then we will download all versions (iOS/Andorid/Windows) and add it as part of our testing process. However, most online casinos in NZ these days use HTML5 instant play iGaming technology. For these casinos, we carry out our tests using mobile and desktop browsers such as:
- Chrome
- Firefox
- Safari
- Internet Explorer
Online Casino Bonuses & Rewards Programs
One of the most important points to consider before you join an online casino is the licensing. Once you are happy the casino is safe, trustworthy, and fair, the next steps to consider are the casino’s bonuses and/or games.
For some casino players, the casino’s gaming catalogue will be the most important factor, while for others the quality of the casino’s bonuses will overshadow the number or quality of games available. However, most casino players are looking for the perfect balance between two – one that gives them high-quality and diverse gaming and plenty of free cash to play them and this is where Online Casino Geeks can help.
Our casino reviews break down live casino bonuses, online slot promotions, cashback deals, and reload bonus offers so you have a general idea of of the types of bonuses you can expect from each casino we review. By reading our reviews, you will become a casino bonus expert as we include important information straight from the bonus terms and conditions. By enlarging the small print that most people miss, you will be able to learn exactly how casino bonuses work.
Here are the most important points we cover:
Wagering requirements: Some casinos offer bonuses with no wagering requirements, but the majority of casino bonuses will come with wagering requirements attached. For example, a casino that applies a 35x wagering requirement means you will need to wager NZ$350 for every NZ$10 that you deposit before the bonus money becomes available as withdrawable cash. If there is a 0x wagering requirement, then the money is instantly available for withdrawal.
Bonus money balance: When you claim a bonus with wagering requirements attached, the bonus money is displayed in your ‘bonus money balance’ while your deposited cash is displayed in a ‘real money’ balance. You cannot withdraw bonus cash until the wagering requirements have been played through.
Bonus expiration: Almost every casino bonus has an expiration date. This is applied to the bonus money, free spins, or any free chips you are given as part of the welcome bonus offer. If you have not reached the wagering requirements on your bonus money by the time the bonus expires, your ‘bonus balance’ is removed, while your cash will remain. The same applies to unused free spins or casino chips.
Free Spins: Online slots are incredibly popular which is why so many online casinos in New Zealand offer free spins promotions. Free spins bonuses are normally awarded when you make a cash deposit. Thereafter, any winnings from the bonus free spins are paid into your ‘bonus money balance’ which will have wagering requirements attached. On top of this, each free spin will be worth a pre-set amount; for example, 0.50 per spin. We make sure we cover all these details in our reviews.
Deposit stages: If a bonus has several deposit stages, then we will break each one down to make it easy for you to understand the deal you are being offered. Deposit stages are commonly used with welcome bonus offers. An example of a 3-stage bonus would be:
- 1st deposit – 100% deposit match up to NZ$200
- 2nd deposit – 50% deposit match up to NZ$400
- 3rd deposit – 100% deposit match up to NZ$300
Welcome Bonuses
Welcome bonuses give New Zealand casino players the chance to kickstart their casino bankroll with free bonus cash. New player bonuses are available when you open your new casino account and can only be claimed one time. The most common welcome bonus is the deposit match, but there are also free spins, cashback deals, and free casino chip bonus offers.
No matter which type of welcome bonus the casino offers, our review team at Online Casino Geeks breaks it down so you can see exactly what is on offer. Our reviewers read the ‘bonus terms and conditions’ then write them into the reviews in plain English so you do not have to read the small print yourself or get confused with the casino’s terminology.
No Deposit Casino Bonus
Some online casinos in New Zealand will give you free bonus money, free spins, or free casino chips just for creating an account. For instance, this could be 20 free spins worth $0.10 on the Book of Dead online slot or $10.00 of free bets. The winnings from chips or spins or free cash will all be placed into a ‘bonus money balance’ and have wagering requirements attached. Our casino reviews break down exactly how no deposit bonus work.
Other Bonuses & Rewards Programs
Regular casino bonuses are the ones that are offered in a casino’s ‘promotions’ or ‘bonus’ section or sent to you via SMS/email. They are usually daily, weekly, monthly, or seasonal bonuses that can be claimed regularly – hence they are also referred to as ‘regular casino bonuses’.
These will have wagering requirements or specific rules attached to them while there are a small number of online casinos that do not attach wagering requirements to these regular bonus offers. Online Casino Geek reviews always give you a brief overview of what types of regular bonuses the casino offers.
Casino Customer Support
Customer support options are important for any online service you connect to so why should online casinos in New Zealand be any different? Our panel of casino review experts relies on customer support options to deliver accurate casino reviews by talking with the casino support via live chat, reading through FAQs, and the casino’s T&Cs.
- Live Chat
- Email Support
- Telephone Support
- Easy to navigate FAQ Sections
- Clear T&Cs Pages
Why Is Online Casino Geeks Different to Its Competitors?
Our team of review experts is made up of real casino players that understand exactly what information you need as an online casino player. As we mentioned in the ‘casino customer support’ section above, our review panel takes the time and effort to dig deep into the FAQ and T&C pages. We take this approach seriously because we want to dig out the most important points from the small print and interpret complex casino jargon into plain and easy to understand English.
For experienced online casino players, we save them hours of research time while for new casino players we help to avoid any misinterpretations or misunderstanding of the casino’s rules. Plus, most importantly, by using the small print, we bring out the most accurate information possible for our reviews thus giving you informative and trustworthy online casino reviews.
We have also taken a happy-medium approach to the way we review casinos. Rather than writing layers upon layers of information, we keep them short and sweet so all you need to do is quickly browse for the information to get a good and accurate understanding of exactly what the casino has to offer.
Finally, our due diligence enables us to deliver to you accurate top 10 and top 5 lists for the best New Zealand casinos to play at, bonuses, slots, as well as other lists that identify the best real money iGaming available to online and mobile casino players in New Zealand. Furthermore, Whether you are looking to play at a fiat currency casino or a cryptocurrency casino, we have it covered because our casino review team is made up of a mix of crypto and fiat casino players too!
Happy hunting and good luck from all of us here at Online Casino Geeks, and don’t forget, if you have any questions, please feel free to contact us.