- Design – the interface is easy to use and understand and the site is straightforward and intuitive
- Games! – wow! What a variety! Great producers are stocking their slots here, and the site goes beyond a standard slot selection into live casino games, table games, and even sports betting.
- Promotions – the promises are big, and they’ve lived up to the aim of making their promotions imaginative. In the past, they’ve included trips to space!
- Style – this is very subjective, but we found some of the design a little tired, and some of the look of the site wasn’t so great
- Restrictions – even the best sites have restrictions, and players from some countries can’t access Royal Panda or cash-in bonuses. No such problem for UK players though.
Royal Panda Online Casino Review
We’re not a party to discussions at the World Federation of Casino Naming Protocols so won’t pretend to have too much understanding of why this site is named Royal Panda. Perhaps it is with the booming East Asian market in mind? But surely, all the pandas live in communist China so would have a politburo rather than a royal family. Maybe we’re thinking too hard about this.
Putting aside the odd name, Royal Panda Casino is another gambling site based in Malta, one of the world’s favourite casino jurisdictions, but promising to do things in a different way.
The site says it was formed by industry veterans who were shocked at the poor experience offered to players by some sites and promised to provide good quality customer care, original promotions, transparency, and an easy-to-use website, including mobile safe play via the Royal Panda app for mobile.
That’s a lot of big promises! We’re certainly going to be a fan of this site if it lives up to all that. But can it?
Well, the design of Royal Panda online casino is simple enough, their sign up bonus offer seems to be clearly explained on the front page, they have loads of games – specialising in live gaming, but also offering sports betting – and also trail a big loyalty programme. The site is good on security and safety and is available on all popular platforms, including all the big mobile platforms.
But, when you dig into the bamboo shoots, is this panda a bear you’d want to give a squeeze to?
Let’s take a deeper look in our Royal Panda Casino review.
Royal Panda Casino Pros
- Design – the interface is easy to use and understand and the site is straightforward and intuitive
- Games! – wow! What a variety! Great producers are stocking their slots here, and the site goes beyond a standard slot selection into live casino games, table games, and even sports betting.
- Promotions – the promises are big, and they’ve lived up to the aim of making their promotions imaginative. In the past, they’ve included trips to space!
Royal Panda Casino Cons
- Style – this is very subjective, but we found some of the design a little tired, and some of the look of the site wasn’t so great
- Restrictions – even the best sites have restrictions, and players from some countries can’t access Royal Panda or cash-in bonuses. No such problem for UK players though.
Is Royal Panda Casino Safe?
While we’ve criticised the look of the site, that’s entirely a matter of taste, and we’re glad to say that Royal Panda online casino looks legitimate and safe to use in every way.
First of all, the set-up and operation of the site is obviously very high quality. The brands displayed on the front page – both game producers and payment providers – are the best in the business. This sort of check might seem superficial, and you should go deeper no doubt, but a bad and potentially dishonest site is very likely to be put together quickly by hit-and-run scammers.
First look confirmed as OK then, we can move on to the next check you should always make, and that is for licensing. It’s possible to play at unlicensed sites, but please don’t. It’s vital not only that you use only licensed sites, but also that they are licensed for you to use in your current jurisdiction and age – don’t try to get around age or geographic restrictions.
Royal Panda online casino don’t just have licenses, they boast about them! And why not?
The company behind Royal Panda is based in Malta, and that’s where you’ll find their first licence. This is licence number MGA/CRP/237/2013. Good news for players in countries that accept that licensing!
Not so good for UK players, who need to see this: Licensed by the UK Gambling Commission. Here we have another number: 000-039221-R-319351-011. Clicking the link on the site confirms that the licence is up to date and, great news, it doesn’t have any restrictions or notes on it! Royal Panda are licensed for two types of gaming in the UK: General Betting Standard – Real Event, and General betting (standard) (virtual events), to cover its slot and casino games and sports betting.
That’s great. Licensing from these two well-known authorities is a great start and means a load of checks are made on games, banking and funds.
You can also trust Royal Panda Casino with data. The site promises full encryption via certified, secure servers. There is an extended validation SSL certificate on the site, who use COMODO to provide their security, and 256-bit encryption.
Games are also certified as being fair and audited. Royal Panda uses random number generator software to ensure that all games are completely at the chance. The live casino games are staffed by trained dealers who go through vetting by the same Malta Gaming Authority who licence the whole gaming site.
Royal Panda Bonus Sign Up Offers & Royal Panda Free Spins
Please remember when you check out reviews of sites that you can never rely on bonus news! Bonuses are the biggest tool for marketing in the casino business, so they are subject to change at short notice.
This bonus information was checked in January 2019, and we’re looking at the bonus for UK players – bonuses may also change by geographic location.
The Royal Panda bonus we found was a £100-maximum 100% bonus on first deposits. That means that if you put £10 or more into your account when you join, Royal Panda Casino will give you bonuses to the same value up to a maximum amount of £100.
That sounds great. And we’re glad that Royal Panda say they’re transparent about their bonuses, so let’s take a look at the small print, which is at least very easy to find (something that certainly isn’t true at all sites).
First of all, you have to opt-in by ticking a box. Fair enough. Your bonus is added to a separate balance of bonus funds. You must then meet “wagering requirements” before funds in your bonus balance, which is where the winnings from your bonus funds go.
So how long will you have to wait? You have to wait until you have bet 35-times your original deposit in real actual cash. Any bets you make using bonus funds will not count towards wagering requirements. There is also a list – that isn’t as long or restrictive as those at some other sites – of different values for the games you play. For example, only 10% of the money spent on live casino games will count towards this wagering requirement.
Check restrictions
There are also restrictions on the size of bets you can make with bonus money, with very low limits on some games. If you withdraw any money from your account before you have played through the wagering requirements, then you will lose all your bonus funds, including winnings from betting with your bonus funds. You have 90 days to use your bonus.
Users of e-wallets – Neteller, PayPal, Skrill or Paysafecard – cannot claim the Royal Panda bonus.
That’s not quite the end of the restrictions. These cover most of it though. There is no way around it. The restrictions on Welcome Bonuses in the casino industry as a whole look awful when written down.
The same is true here, and these conditions are entirely consistent with the rest of the industry and entirely consistent in being quite removed from the expectation a player has when they see a “100% bonus” on deposits.
That’s just the way it is. And the best way to avoid disappointment is to have a realistic expectation of what “free money” actually means, and to use your bonus funds in that way – really, it’s a way of taking a look around a site to see if you like it, rather than a way you’re going to win thousands of pounds in prizes without spending any money of your own. This will not happen. Forget it.
Claim the free bet too
We’re mainly interested in casino games and slots here, but there is also an introductory offer for sports bettors at Royal Panda Casino.
This is a free £20 sports bet. You earn this by depositing £20 or more and betting £20 or more of your own money. Then you’ll get your free bet.
In order to qualify, you must bet on something with odds of 2.0 or more with your own money, and then you must bet on something with those odds with your free bet. You cannot withdraw your stake from the free bet, but you can withdraw your winnings.
E-wallet users – Skrill, PayPal, Neteller and Paysafecard – are again not eligible for this reward, and it must be cashed in within 90 days of receiving it.
It is possible that this offer might – if you’re an experienced sports bettor – get better value for players (if they win!). It’s not explicitly stated in the rules, but most sites will not allow you to cash in more than one different welcome bonus, so you should pick one of these and try your hand with that.
Games & Software
Royal Panda has hundreds of games. It appears they are running on the site’s own operating software, and the games themselves come from a good range of some of the best developers in the business.
The games are tiled across the front page and can be searched and arranged in a number of ways.
Click on the all games tab and you’ll get a load of options. You can select games by their popularity and by these categories: video slots, classic slots (these are a genre, often fruit machines), roulette, blackjack, table games, video poker, live casino games, and “more”.
“More” gives you “hot and cold slots”, scratch cards, soft games, and virtual sports betting. Softgames – there aren’t many – are strategy gambling games.
Many of these Royal Panda games can be played for free, and we always advise our players to do this.
Among the developers whose games are available on the site are: Microgaming, NetEnt, Evolution Gaming, NextGen Gaming, 1x2Gaming, Barcrest Games, Aristocrat, Genesis Gaming, Rabcat, Thunderkick, Elk Studios, and Pragmatic Play.
Royal Panda Slots
Slots are at the heart of most online casinos. In this, Royal Panda is a little different, by putting a lot of effort into getting their casino games, including live casino games, front and centre.
Some of the most popular Royal Panda slots at the moment are: Book of Dead, Battle Royal, the Wiz, Starburst, The Great Albini, and Great Rhino.
The top listed classic slots are Diamond Empire, Vegas Diamonds, Sea Hunter, Lucky Diamonds, and Speed Cash.
There are far too many games to list here. However, you will find a very good selection of games here, and the developers listed are good ones.
It’s unusual not to list the jackpot games – usually meaning progressive jackpots – separately, but there are some of the sites.
Banking
We all want to have an easy and trustworthy way to get our money into our account, and, more importantly, to get money out when we win those big prizes – and after we’ve met all those restrictions on the welcome bonus, of course.
You’ll be pleased to hear then that Royal Panda has a big selection of payment methods. They have a variety of different deposit and withdrawal limits, and – please check above – users of some of these methods cannot claim the Royal Panda bonus.
Payment methods at Royal Panda Casino
- Credit cards allow you to deposit from £10 to £50,000 with instant transactions.
- Skrill allows you instant deposits of between £10 and £10,000.
- Neteller has instant deposits from £10 to £15,000. Paysafecard and AstroPay, Astropay Direct, Dinero Mail, and EcoPayz have the same conditions.
- Use e-Pro to deposit instantly between £10 and £2,500.
- Euteller allows you to deposit between £10 and £15,000, as does eWire, Giropay, iDebit, Instadebit, Interac, iWallet, MuchBetter, SafetyPay, Sofort, Todito Cash, LobaNet, GluePay, Venus Point, and Zimpler all offer the same deal.
- You can withdraw money to banks by transfer, for free with a transaction time of between one and five days. You can withdraw between £10 and £100,000 this way.
- To Skrill, you can withdraw the same amounts instantly. As you can from Neteller. Credit card withdrawals take between one and five days and can only accept up to £50,000.
As we’ve seen, Royal Panda has a very high standard for safety and security, including in its banking and data security operations.
There’s a slight issue here with payments being accepted from many more methods than you can pay out to.
It’s also true that we’ve quoted some slightly contradictory advice here, all coming from the site itself: the site lists PayPal as a restricted method of depositing that will not allow you to access its welcome bonuses, but it doesn’t list PayPal as an accepted payment method on its banking page. Maybe that’s our mistake, but we don’t think so, and if not this is a bit worrying.
Customer Support
Hopefully, little mistakes like that don’t reflect a broader problem with the site, and usually, they don’t.
Again, Royal Panda Casino has made some big claims for its customer support offering, making it one of the moving principles of its mission statement, and doing so by criticising the customer support at other unnamed sites.
That’s fair enough. If there is one issue that is raised time and time again on casino forums and in industry gossip it is of unanswered emails and unsatisfactory chats with customer service people.
The first thing to say is that we’ve seen that Royal Panda Casino is completely legitimate and it does a great deal to put its money where its mouth is in that respect.
But does that include a good customer service offering?
We think so.
The company has gone to the trouble to create a good lot of informational content on the site, including a long about page and FAQs that are well written and comprehensive. If the site is trying to be transparent, it does well in this respect because you can actually find out a lot of stuff in those pages that at other sites is hidden away in terms and conditions that nobody reads.
We urge you to at least have a good scan of these pages before you sign up at Royal Panda Casino.
What do you do if you do have a problem that needs some personal help?
The good news is that there is a phone number. Most players consider this to be the gold standard for customer support – though, if it takes two hours to answer and the answerer hangs up on you then it’s not fit for purpose of course – especially when, as in this case, it is in the UK.
The number, should you need it, is +44(0) 203 808 3530, and the line is open from 9 am to 12.30 am in the Central European Time Zone, so it may be out an hour in the British Summer Time.
There is even an option to fill in a form for a callback, which is really very much going above and beyond in terms of casino help services – props are due here.
You can also email to support@royalpanda.com, or you can fill in a form to send a message.
Chat services are available with the same opening hours.
This is a great set of help services and this part of the site does Royal Panda casino great credit.
We should be honest here about the limits of this Royal Panda review. It is only in actual use that you will discover how good or bad a customer service offering is. It’s all very well us reporting on the theoretical availability of these services, but they’ll only be as good as their response to your call for help. We will say that we haven’t seen any reports of problems online in researching this review. Feel free to check out help services at any site you use, even if you don’t really have a problem – it’s your right as a customer to have these services available, so seeing that they’re there (always be polite!) is a legitimate thing to do.
Royal Panda Online Casino – The Final Verdict
Royal Panda Casino seem to be doing everything right from what we can see. Our reservations about the site are superficial and shallow.
We’re being somewhat harsher on ourselves than the site on that verdict! Don’t get us wrong, though. We don’t really like the front page look of the site. And these days there’s no reason for a site to have really fantastic design throughout.
However, there’s no doubting that the site works really well, and it has a lot of great content. The games are top quality, with a really good live casino offering – and also the casino games – that make it one of the best on the market in this sometimes neglected area.
Sports betting too is an area that a lot of casino fans enjoy. So having that option – and the alternative bonus that signing up via that part of the site offers – is a big plus to a lot of players. We’re no good at sports betting – we support all the wrong teams for winning, believe us!
While it doesn’t have the widest selection of slot games, what it does have are really good quality.
The problems we see are minor. The banking is lopsided between deposit methods and withdrawal methods, which is unusual. The welcome bonus has pretty onerous conditions, though they are by no means out of the ordinary in the industry, at least they are spelt out honestly.
The only other issues are also minor. While there are a load of help options, they aren’t available for all the hours that the site is open, and that feels a bit off.
However, taken as a whole, we think anyone who signs up at this site is going to have a good experience, play a lot of great games, and we also believe that they can do so with some of the best safety and security policies – and explanations of them – at any site on the web. Log in now and check out this site – making sure you roll up to the live casino rooms – and we reckon you’ll be quite happy for pandas to have a royal family!
All UK Online Casino Reviews updated 2021
