It's a great time to be a South African online casino fan – there are currently more rand casinos online than there have ever been, creating a huge amount of choice for local players. It seems like all of a sudden, the world has woken up to the fact that a) we exist and b) we like to play just as much as any other nation.

You see, in the past, if you wanted to play at an online casino, you could, but you had to go through a whole mission to get funding into the casino. To appreciate the issue, you have to understand how money works at online casino.

With a traditional land-based casino, you walk in the door and head to the cashier. You give the cashier a wad of cash, or swipe your card, or write a cheque or whatever, and they give you a pile of chips. Then you go and play whatever games you desire from the myriad of options available, including some of the best slot machines,roulette or blackjack. When you're done for the day, whether you're up or down, you take your stack back to the cashier who turns it back into real money for you.

Online casinos work a little differently, necessitated by the simple fact that there's no physical building that you can walk into. So instead, when you play at an online casino, you open an account with them, more or less as you would with online banking.

You transfer some money into your casino account from your bank account, credit card, or one of the e-wallet solutions that are proving so popular these days, and then you can start enjoying the games at the casino.

It works in realtime – your casino account acts as your stack would. As you play, your bets come out of your casino account, and as you win, the money goes back into it – but the money stays at the casino. When you decide you want to take your winnings into the real world, you request a withdrawal which is then transferred back into your regular bank account.

Now, in the past, this usually had to be done in US Dollars, or Pounds, or Euros, simply because online casinos weren't explicitly serving South Africans. So you had to be prepared to pay for Forex charges on every transaction, which adds up and becomes expensive if you're just a casual gamer – plus the fact that with the dodgy rand, you lost money just on the conversion, and this turned a lot of people off.

But no longer. Now an increasing number of the best online casinos around the world accept South African Rand both as a primary funding solution and as a playing currency. You deposit money into your casino account in rands, you play in rands, and you withdraw in rands.

It's just so much easier. And it's hugely less expensive and complicated than the old method of doing things, especially since your local bank is no longer spanking you on charges for sending and receiving dollars. You can now play at rand casinos online without all of the financial hassle.