Scratch Card Games for Real Money UK

Scratch Card Games – Real Money Favourites

Whether you’re getting rid of some spare change, need to make up the £5 card payment minimum at the shop or it’s part of your weekly routine – it’s fair to say we love the humble scratchie here in Old Blighty. Scratch card games provide a softer form of gambling that extends beyond the usual betting audience – the thought of your nan tanning four pints of Carling while she watches her acca come up on Soccer Saturday is most likely a comical fantasy (for most, we don’t know your nan of course!). However, the image of her scratching away at the Christmas dinner table, or at the local shop counter is quite possibly a fairly normal one that wouldn’t make you bat an eyelid.

Why Britain Loves the Humble Scratchie

Just like football, cups of tea and moaning about the weather, scratch card games for real money form a part of daily British life for many across all generations. The shop-bought National Lottery scratch cards still remain the staple favourite and are likely never to be surpassed, which is why we put together our guide to playing and winning 2 pound scratch cards.

National Lottery scratch cards have weathered the digital storm better than almost anything else – you still can’t order one over the internet and still need to go back to the shop to check if it’s a winner. That’s right, with the National Lottery, there’s still no way to claim scratch cards online! We don’t seem to mind this lingering old school method of playing either – after all, you can’t buy 1p and 2p sweets any more thanks to inflation, so what else are coppers good for? If you are, however, looking at online scratch card options, the National Lottery might not offer them, but there are some alternatives – and we’ll take a look at them below.

Can I Play Scratch Card Games for Real Money Online?

So your old favourite National Lottery cards can still only be bought at the shop, but all’s not lost for the budding digital scratcher. It’s 2021 for Pete’s sake, so of course, there are ways to scratch away online – and plenty of them too! There are plenty of legal lottery and bingo sites available here in the UK that have virtual scratch card games for real money available, that you can play and win for real money! Some of them can even be played for as little as 20p a go – this, of course, means smaller prize pools, but also better odds of winning – a fair trade really. If you want to mix the online world with the real-life thrill of scratching away, there are also ways to buy scratch cards online free of delivery charges – in some cases at least.

How to Play Scratch Card Games Online?

If you’ve only ever played a physical scratch card, you might very well be wondering how the process of scratching away with a 2p coin can be replicated digitally. It’s a fair question, and we’re only too happy to answer. It’s quite simple really, and probably just how you imagine it would be.

Firstly, when you enter the game, you can select how many scratch card games for real money you want to buy from the main menu – essentially like buying one or multiple cards at the shop. However, where you have an advantage over shop-bought cards is that virtual cards sometimes give you a discount for bulk buying. Once you enter the actual game, you can instantly start virtually scratching away. The card will appear on your screen, and all you have to do is scratch away using the mouse as your coin – and if you match three symbols, or whatever the game object is, you win. Easy like a Sonntagmorgen, as our German friends might say. If you thought you might miss the physical scratching process, the online way of doing it is smooth and extremely satisfying.

Playing Scratch Card Games Online vs Offline

As we mentioned back at the start of our banterous scratch card adventure, we all love a good over-the-counter scratchie here in Britain. So can we really be convinced to get on board with this digital version, or is the humble scratchie and old habit that will die hard for all generations. Perhaps it will become likened to watching football at home on the telly vs actually going through the turnstiles – online scratch cards will reach a wider audience, but die-hards will take to social media to sneer at the “armchair scratchers”.

All jokes aside, we’ve taken a look at the advantages of playing scratch cards online for real money vs the real-life version:

The Advantages of Playing Scratch Card Games UK Online

Variety

We’re not exactly short of options when it comes to physical scratch cards, however, they all come from the same source – the National Lottery. And although we have various £1, £2 and £3 scratch cards, they are all confined to those three categories and more or less follow the same formula. With online scratch cards, the list of options and variety is quite literally endless, as is the range of websites. Software developers are used to developing high graphic video slots and live poker games, so they can create and churn out a simple little scratch card game in no time at all.

It Can Be Cheaper Online

The cheapest physical scratch card you can buy in the UK is £1, which isn’t overly expensive, but there are cheaper options online. Online scratch card games can be played for at little as 20p, meaning you can play five online cards for the price of one of the cheapest physical cards. This does of course mean smaller prizes, but it’s all relative at the end of the day – so if you want more scratching fun for your money, scratch card games for real money online is the way to go!

Bulk Buying Discounts

No matter how many scratch cards you buy, the price at the top corner of the card is the price – no matter how much volume you buy. You can try your best to haggle with your local shopkeeper, but their hands are tied – the price is set by the National Lottery, and it’s non-negotiable. With online scratch cards on the other hand, it’s perfectly normal for you to get a discount for buying scratch cards in bulk, and you can do it all at the click of a button as well – no more messy rolls with scratch card games for real money online.

Get You Winnings Instantly

As we’ve already mentioned before, you can’t even check if your National Lottery scratch card is a winner online. Sadly, you still have to get off your bum and trek all the way to the shop to confirm its a winner and get your cash – and who wants to go through that on a rainy Tuesday night in Stoke? If your online scratch card is a winner, it’ll pop up and congratulate you right away – and the money will appear in your online betting account. We should point out though, that just like with your usual online betting or casino accounts, you will have to go through the withdrawal process.

Smooth and Satisfying

Understandably, the thing that many of you reading this might miss when playing online scratchies is the actual scratching itself. There is something to be said for the process of pulling the change out of your wallet and scratching away. However it is a rough and messy process – and those annoying little silvery shavings get everywhere don’t they? The online scratching process is silky smooth and extremely satisfying. You know when the window cleaner starts swishing off the soap with ease to reveal swathes of gleaming clean windows – it’s like that. The only problem with this is that the process can no longer be considered a “scratch”, but let’s not get hung up on that when it comes to scratch card games for real money.

Where to Play Scratch Cards for Real Money Online

If you’ve never played them before, you’ll probably be pleasantly surprised how easy it is to find and play online scratch cards here in the UK. Naturally, there are dedicated online scratch card websites that you can sign up to, make deposits and play straight away – but you don’t need a dedicated scratch card website to play online. As the two tie in quite well and have a similar target audience, Bingo sites, such as Mecca Bingo, have plenty of scratch cards available to play. Naturally, lottery sites also often have online scratch cards, or at least give you the option to buy online – the big exception here is the National Lottery, whose scratch cards are strictly only available to buy in shops and have no online versions.

Additionally, you can also play online scratch cards via your online casino or betting account. Check the casino side of your online betting account website or app just now for scratch card games – you might be pleasantly surprised. Even the betting big boys, such as William Hill,  offer some online scratchies for you to enjoy. Sometimes, online scratch cards are even mixed with sports betting bonuses, so let’s take a look at that below shall we?

Scratching for Betting Bonuses

You don’t always have to play scratch cards for real money – although that is the most popular way of playing. In the past, some online sportsbooks have introduced scratch card games to their existing customers as a way of giving away betting bonuses. So how has this worked exactly? The short answer is the same as usual scratch cards work – match the symbols and win the prize. Only rather than being real money, the prizes, in this case, are betting bonuses. These could be free bets, odds boosters, money back on losses or any manner of sports betting bonuses available on the site.

One of the most popular versions of this that we’ve seen in the past is William Hill’s Scratch of the Day, where they gave their online customers a scratch card that they could play, and if they matched enough football symbols, could get Premier League betting bonuses. Please note, that this is a past example, and although it might be introduced again in the future, there’s no guarantee it’s on at your time of reading, so please check the William Hill site directly.

Do I Have a Better Chance of Winning Online or Offline?

The style of playing online vs offline scratch cards might be important for some, but we can imagine that for the majority of you, the chance of actually winning is the criteria at the top of the list. So what gives us better chances? The trusted old lottery scratch cards, or their online counterparts. As much as we wish there was, there’s no real blanket answer to this question. That is to say, we can’t divide the chances of winning based on online and offline games – it all comes down to game types and providers at the end of the day.

Do More Expensive Scratch Cards Have More Winners?

It seems logical to think that you’ll have a better chance of winning a £1 scratch card than a £2 scratch card – and in some cases, it’s even true. However, rather than having a greater chance of winning, more expensive scratch cards tend to have a greater influence on the amount you stand to win. That’s not just when it comes to the jackpots either. Of course, in most cases, pricier scratch card games online will have higher potential jackpots, however, the chances of you winning seven-figure jackpots are pretty slim, to say the least, so this isn’t what you want to focus on too much.

Instead, you want to focus on how the price of the card might influence the lower prizes, which are usually proportionate to the card price. For example, a 20p online scratch card might not give you any less or any more chance of winning than a £1 or £2, but the lowest prizes are usually always matched to the price of the card. Therefore, the majority of the available prizes on a 20p scratch card will be 20p – meaning you have a smaller chance of winning a pound on a 20p scratch card than you would on a £1 scratch card. It’s all proportionate to the card value, if that makes sense?

Scratch Card Games For Real Money – The Verdict?

To summarise, the important thing to take away from this article here at Betting.co.uk, is that online scratch cards definitely aren’t hard to find and can easily be played on websites, Android betting apps UK or iOS betting apps UK. It’s important to note there are both advantages and disadvantages to playing scratch cards offline and online. The physical lottery scratch card is still so much a part of modern British life that we can’t even call it nostalgic yet, even though scratch card games online are plentiful and can be found right there in your online betting account. At the end of the day, it’s not really up to us to advise you one way or the other – it’s up to you to choose, and why not have both?

Scratch Card Games Online FAQ