This has to come before anything else. The operators compared on this site are licensed offshore, which means they cannot see a Canadian provincial self-exclusion register. If you have excluded yourself through a provincial operator or through iGaming Ontario, none of the sites listed here knows that and none of them will stop you. That is not a feature of Interac or of any operator; it is a consequence of them sitting outside the licensed market. If it applies to you, the right action is to close this page.
There is one genuinely effective tool and it sits on your side of the transaction. Most Canadian banks can block gambling-related payments on an account, and because an Interac deposit is initiated inside your own online banking rather than around it, that block is effective rather than advisory. It is also harder to reverse in a moment of impulse than a casino's own cooling-off toggle, which is exactly what makes it worth setting up. Ask your bank what it offers.
On a provincially licensed site, deposit limits, session reminders and self-exclusion are mandatory. On an offshore operator they are at best optional — some offer them in the account area, several do not. Anyone opening an account on one of these sites should look for those settings first and configure them before the first deposit, not after a loss.
Depositing money that was meant for something else. Increasing a deposit to win back a previous loss. Hiding how much is being played from the people you live with. Opening a new account because a previous balance is gone. Looking for a site that will accept you after you asked to be excluded — which is one of the reasons people arrive on pages like this one. Any single one of those is enough reason to stop.
ConnexOntario provides free, confidential support 24 hours a day on 1-866-531-2600. The Responsible Gambling Council publishes provincial resources, and every province operates a problem-gambling helpline through its health service. Gamblers Anonymous holds meetings across the country. Gambling is restricted to 19+ in most provinces and 18+ in Alberta, Manitoba and Quebec, and it can cause addiction.
