Much like its neighbour, India, Pakistan is also a country that uses the rupee. However, make no mistake about it; the Pakistani rupee is not like-for-like with its counterpart. The Pakistani rupee is a tricky currency to get the hang of if you don’t like large numbers. For instance, it can be counted in lakh (thousands), crore (tens of millions), arab (billions) and even kharab (hundreds of billions).
For a Pakistani, this is water off a duck’s back, but the currency will be tricky to grasp for Westerners. Betting online is illegal in Pakistan, so there aren’t too many takers when it comes to internet betting sites that accept PKR. However, the currency has users outside of its homeland, so some Pakistani rupee casinos exist. Below, you will find a handful of the top (and trusted) PKR online casinos you can choose to play at if you wish to wager with this often-ignored currency.
The Pakistani rupee isn’t common in the online gambling world. Unlike its neighbour, Pakistan has strict anti-gambling laws, so there isn’t much market for the rupee to be used. Even if you do opt to wager in Pakistani rupees, you’re in for a bit of a shock. Despite being pegged to British pounds sterling until 1982, the currency was allowed to float. It rapidly depreciated against the US dollar around the turn of the millennium and has consistently lost value ever since. In 2016, you could get Rs 104 to a single US dollar. This has since risen to Rs 161 as of 2021.
While Pakistan is the only country to use the PKR formally, Afghanistan has also taken to using Pakistani rupees, albeit unofficially and only in the easternmost part of the country. The primary reason for this is that while the PKR is not the most stable of currencies, it tends to be more so than the afghani.
One would imagine that with a population of 225 million, Pakistan would be a hotbed for online gambling, with hundreds of payment providers eager to get involved in processing transactions for PKR online casinos. Of course, there is one problem that stops this from happening – Pakistan’s gambling laws.
The Muslim country has strict anti-gambling laws that prohibit virtually every form of gambling. While even lotteries have been chopped, horse racing (at one of four sanctioned tracks) is highly regulated and technically legal. Punishments for gambling can include Rs. 1,000 fines, or up to five years in prison.
What is notable here is that some Pakistanis residing outside Pakistan do gamble online, and they may choose to use the PKR to do it. However, this is not a big enough market to interest casino operators or payment providers or sway them into accepting the currency.
To access alternative payment methods (that accept PKR) and hide their transactions, gamblers in Pakistan have been known to US dollars instead of Pakistani rupees. When looking for popular deposit and withdrawal methods at PKR casinos, you’re going to run up short. There aren’t many of them. Pakistan can monitor transactions from its banks. Therefore, the following options are advised: