Reload bonuses aimed at Australian players: the mechanism, the money and the legal position

Data current as of 30 October 2026 · Licence claims verified against the ACMA register of formal warnings and the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 as published by the Australian Government.

A reload bonus looks, at first glance, like a reward for loyalty. A returning player gets told that the next deposit will be matched, or topped up with free spins, or both. The marketing word is “loyalty”. The arithmetic underneath it is something else. A reload bonus exists because the house expects to keep most of what it gives away, and the player who does not read the small print ends up paying for the privilege of playing with money they cannot withdraw yet. For Australian players the question goes one step further: there is no licensed Australian online casino to claim a reload bonus on. Every reload offer that lands in an Australian inbox comes from an operator the ACMA has either warned or is in the process of blocking, on a product the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 prohibits from being supplied here in the first place. This page is about how that mechanism sits in an Australian reality, and what following it through a single deposit cycle actually costs.

Keeping a sense of proportion before the rest of the page

A reload bonus, like any sign-up inducement, is a marketing tool aimed at a player who has already demonstrated they will deposit. That distinction matters more than the headline figure, because every dollar of bonus money the operator offers is money it expects back, plus a margin. The marketing line frames the offer as a gift; the contract behind it frames it as advance credit against future play, recoverable if the player tries to leave before meeting its conditions. The honest starting point for a reader is that reload bonuses are not rewards, and the question worth asking is what they cost the person who accepts one.

For Australians the choice is narrower still. The only licensed interactive wagering services available online are racing and sports bookmakers, lotteries and keno. Online casino games and online pokies cannot be licensed anywhere in Australia. A reload bonus tied to casino games therefore arrives from a site that has no Australian licence and no Australian regulator to answer to if a withdrawal stalls or a balance disappears. The Australian Communications and Media Authority can order the site blocked, and has been doing so in growing numbers, but a block does not refund a balance. That is the structural position the rest of this page works through.

Anyone who finds themselves returning to these offers more often than they intend, or who is depositing to chase money already lost, can contact the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858, free and 24 hours a day, with chat through Gambling Help Online. BetStop, the National Self-Exclusion Register, is the formal channel for excluding yourself from licensed Australian wagering services; it does not bind offshore casinos, which is why the register is a complement to a personal decision rather than a substitute for one. Neither service is conditional on giving up the offer, and neither asks for proof that the caller has a problem before they take a call.

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How payments interact with reload offers at unlicensed sites

Reload bonuses are funded by deposits, and the deposit method is where the legal frame first touches a player who never intended to be in it. Under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 as amended in 2023, Australian-licensed online wagering services cannot accept payment by credit card or any other credit-related product, a ban that came into full effect for licensed operators on 11 June 2024 and which the regulator has signalled also covers digital wallets linked to a credit facility. The licensed deposit routes that remain are debit card, bank transfer, PayID or Osko, and BPAY. Crypto is on the same prohibition list. An offshore casino asking an Australian for a credit card or a coin transfer is not running inside the Australian system, which is also why its reload bonus sits outside it.

PayID, Osko and the speed of the deposit itself

PayID is the address layer built on Australia’s New Payments Platform, which became accessible to the public on 13 February 2018 and is now operated, along with Osko and BPAY, by Australian Payments Plus, the merged entity the ACCC authorised in September 2021. By April 2025 more than 25 million PayID identifiers had been registered, and transfers are available at over 100 Australian financial institutions. With Osko the actual movement of money between participating banks takes under a minute, twenty-four hours a day, including weekends, whether the transfer is addressed to a BSB and account number or to a PayID. The headline appeal of an offshore reload offer often leans on this same near-instant settlement from the player’s side, because once a player hits “deposit” the money has gone.

Two features of PayID matter when the destination is not a licensed wagering service. The first is visibility: paying to a PayID surfaces the name of the account holder before the transfer is sent, and Australian Payments Plus warns that being asked to transfer to a PayID on an illegal gambling site “almost certainly” means a scam site. The second is the consumer protection baked into the platform: participants in the New Payments Platform are required to keep monthly outages to no more than two minutes, which is a service reliability guarantee that no offshore operator is bound by.

BPAY and the bill-payment channel

BPAY has been operating in Australia since 18 November 1997, is available in the online banking of more than 140 banks and financial institutions and is offered by over 95,000 businesses. A BPAY payment is a bill payment, made by entering a Biller Code and a Customer Reference Number printed on the bill. It is owned equally, through Cardlink Services Limited, by the four major Australian banks: ANZ, Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank and Westpac. Because BPAY is a bill-payment rail rather than a card network, it has never been the channel that a credit-card ban could close, and it remains an accepted deposit route at licensed Australian wagering services.

For an unlicensed offshore casino, accepting BPAY would mean accepting a payment from an Australian account at a bank that is one of its own owners, in a rail the bank can monitor. The offshore sites that do accept Australian dollars overwhelmingly prefer methods that look less like a regulated bank transfer: crypto, a few e-wallets, and in some cases a direct debit against a Visa or Mastercard. That choice is itself a signal about who the site expects to answer to.

Apple Pay, Google Pay and the surcharge question

Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay together accounted for around 45% of all card payments in Australia by number at the end of 2025. Apple does not charge fees to consumers for using Apple Pay in stores, online or in apps, and any surcharge a player sees at checkout comes from the merchant’s own card-processing fees rather than from Apple. Transaction limits and PIN requirements for Apple Pay are set by the card issuer or by the merchant, not by Apple. The Reserve Bank of Australia’s July 2025 review of merchant card payment costs proposes removing surcharges on eftpos, Mastercard and Visa transactions, but explicitly leaves American Express outside the scope of that proposed ban, an exception that reflects Amex’s separate three-party network, where the same firm issues the card and processes the transaction.

For gambling in particular, the digital wallet does not stand apart from the card it is linked to. Under the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 as amended in 2023, the ban on credit-related products extends to linked digital wallets, which is why most licensed Australian operators refuse an Apple Pay deposit backed by a credit line.

Bank-side gambling blocks and what they do not catch

The major Australian banks now run card-level gambling blocks that can be turned on from the app. Westpac’s gambling block refuses authorisation of transactions registered under the merchant category code “Betting/Casino Gambling” on eligible personal credit and debit cards. ANZ’s gambling transaction block, once activated in the ANZ app, also blocks gambling transactions made through a digital wallet such as Apple Pay on an eligible card, rather than only the physical card. Turning ANZ’s block off requires a 48-hour waiting period, during which the player has time to reconsider. Commonwealth Bank lets customers apply a gambling lock to eligible cards through the CommBank app and says the lock blocks most gambling transactions, while acknowledging it cannot guarantee every gambling-related purchase will be stopped.

The honest framing of these blocks is that they work at the Australian banking layer, on transactions tagged with the gambling merchant code. An offshore casino that routes its deposits through a crypto exchange, a non-bank e-wallet, or a generic merchant category will not be caught by them, and the player has effectively chosen a deposit route that bypasses their own bank’s intervention. This is the structural reason a credit card ban and a gambling block only narrow the choice; they do not end it.

AUSTRAC, reporting thresholds and the transfer itself

AUSTRAC’s threshold-transaction-report rule requires reporting of transfers of A$10,000 or more, but it applies only to physical cash. Ordinary electronic bank transfers are not subject to that per-transaction reporting requirement, regardless of the amount sent. The implication for a player weighing a large reload is that moving A$10,000 in one transfer by PayID does not, by itself, trigger an AUSTRAC threshold report. The obligation sits elsewhere: on the receiving end, on suspicion, and on the bank or remitter if the activity fits a pattern the institution is required to escalate.

What a reload bonus actually is, in mechanism and in cost

The offer is structured as a matched deposit, often with free spins layered on top. A typical headline is something like “100% up to A$500 plus 50 free spins”, expressed as if the bonus were a gift rather than credit. In the offer terms it is rarely a gift. The mechanics that sit beneath a reload bonus follow a fixed sequence, and each step has a cost to the player who reads past the headline.

The wagering requirement

A wagering requirement is the multiplier applied to the bonus amount that determines how much the player has to bet, in total, before any winnings become withdrawable. A “40x” multiplier on a A$100 bonus means A$4,000 of qualifying bets. Wagering requirements on reload offers tend to run higher than on welcome bonuses because the welcome bonus is the site trying to attract a new account, and the reload is the site trying to keep one. Across the offshore segment the published figures tend to sit in a band a careful player should treat as the baseline rather than the ceiling, because each operator applies the requirement differently to the deposit, the bonus, free spin winnings, or all three. The headline is one number. The application is another.

Game weighting, and why pokies eat the bonus

Most reload bonus terms apply a game weighting rule: bets on different games count toward the wagering requirement at different rates. Online pokies almost always contribute 100%. Table games, live casino and jackpot games commonly contribute a fraction of that, sometimes nothing. The practical effect is that the player who clears a reload bonus on pokies is doing the work the operator expected them to do; the player who tries to clear it on blackjack is, in most terms, doing it at a discount the operator has already priced in. A reload bonus marketed at a player who likes table games often pays the same headline figure but costs more to clear, because each dollar bet contributes less to the requirement.

Maximum bet and the disqualifying clause

Reload bonus terms almost always carry a maximum bet rule while the bonus is active, commonly A$5 or A$10 per spin or hand. A bet above the cap, even once, is treated as a breach and can void the bonus plus the winnings earned with it. The rule is rarely advertised in the headline and is the single most common reason a player reads “your bonus has been forfeited” on a withdrawal attempt. The same terms often exclude certain payment methods from qualifying for the bonus — Skrill and Neteller deposits are the usual exclusions — meaning a player can deposit, fail to qualify, and lose the bonus entirely without ever having been told in the offer email that their deposit method was the wrong one.

Expiry, free spin timing and the cap on winnings

Reload bonus offers carry an expiry window, often seven days from issue, sometimes less. Free spin bundles tend to expire faster. A cap on winnings from free spins is also common: a player wins A$300 from spins and finds the bonus terms cap withdrawable winnings from those spins at A$50. Each of these is the operator protecting the side of the deal it loses on; together they are the structure that turns a “free” offer into a paid one.

The cash-cost frame

The honest frame is statistical. Across many spins on a pokie paying 96% RTP, the player loses about 4% of what they bet in the long run. The wagering requirement is how many bets the player has to make before the bonus releases. Multiplying one by the other gives an estimate of what the bonus actually costs in expected losses — the price the player pays for turning the bonus into withdrawable cash. It is an average, not a guarantee, and the player can win or lose more in any single session. For the offshore segment, the figure runs from uncomfortable to punitive. For an Australian player there is a second cost on top of that, which is the legal cost of dealing with a site the ACMA can order blocked at any time, including with a balance still held.

How the operators compare against each other

Eleven brands appear in the comparison that follows. They are not ranked and they are not recommended. Each has been the subject of a formal warning from the ACMA for offering prohibited interactive gambling services to Australians, which is the only reason an offshore brand appears on a page about the Australian market at all. The brand and the licence claim the site displays are listed alongside the operator the ACMA named and the date of the warning, because for an Australian player the difference between a Curacao-issued licence and a local one is not regulatory cosmetics; it is whether the player has anyone to complain to.

Each row of this table is a brand the ACMA has acted against. “Subject support” in this table refers to background data from listing sites and regulators; the brands themselves have no connection to Australian consumer protection. The column shows how thin the public record is: three of the eleven brands have no independent listing trail at all, four more appear only in regulator and consumer-protection registers, and the remaining four sit on affiliate marketing pages whose only sources were the operators’ own terms. None of this is a recommendation, and the brands are presented in the order in which the ACMA’s formal warnings were first published.

RocketPlay — the only operator warned twice in three years

RocketPlay was the subject of a formal warning to Dama N.V. in May 2022, and again to Pulsup Ltd in March 2026 over Rocketplay.com.au. A repeat action against the same brand name is the ACMA’s record of a brand that did not change course, and a player who reads the ACMA’s list will find it twice under the same product. The reload bonus on offer at any given moment comes with the full offshore cost frame — a wagering requirement, game weighting, a maximum bet, an expiry, and a free-spin cap — and the only source for those terms in the public record is affiliate marketing pages. The earlier warning did not stop the brand; the later one did not stop it either, because the operator behind it can move to a new entity and keep the same front end.

Level Up Casino — the older Dama brand

Level Up Casino sits under the May 2022 Dama N.V. warning alongside five other Dama brands from the same week: Bambet, Dazard, Rocketplay, Wild Tornado and Cobra Casinos. The cluster matters because it shows that a single offshore operator behind a single licence can run several customer-facing brands at once, all of them inheriting the same warning. A reload bonus on Level Up is the same Dama N.V. offer as on RocketPlay or Wild Tornado, with the same wagering requirement and the same cap clauses. The exposure for an Australian player is the same, too.

Woo Casino and Spirit Casino — the second Dama wave

The ACMA issued further formal warnings to Dama N.V. over Woo Casino in March 2025 and over Spirit Casino in May 2025. The two warnings are eight weeks apart, which is the kind of spacing that reflects the regulator working through a list of Dama N.V. brands rather than reacting to each one individually. Woo and Spirit are the same operator at the contract level as the May 2022 Dama cluster, three years later. The reload offer, where present, follows the same shape — matched deposit, free spins, wagering multiplier, time-limited — and the same structural reality: no Australian licence, no Australian recourse if a withdrawal stalls.

National Casino and Bizzo Casino — the Consolutetish action

National Casino and Bizzo Casino were the subject of a joint formal warning to Consolutetish S.R.L. in July 2025. Bizzo Casino had already been the subject of a separate 2022 formal warning to TechSolutions (CY) Group Limited and TechSolutions Group N.V., so the brand has now had two separate operator entities warned over it. The implication for a player is that following the entity behind a brand does not always reveal the same operator twice in a row; it can reveal a chain, where one offshore holder passes a brand to another and the player has no real way to know it has happened.

Ignition Casino — the Bamboo Media warning

The ACMA’s July 2025 warnings also covered Bamboo Media over Ignition Casino. Ignition is the rare case of a brand that is well known in the United States market and has been actively promoted to Australians from outside it. A reload bonus on Ignition offers a U.S.-facing operator’s terms to a player in a market the operator has been formally warned out of. The same conditions apply: matched deposit, wagering multiplier, game weighting, expiry window, max bet, free-spin cap. The fact that the brand has a footprint in a regulated market does not change the status of its Australian-facing site.

Instant Casino — the EOD Code action

Instant Casino was the subject of a formal warning to EOD Code SRL in February 2025. EOD Code is one of the smaller operators on this list by entity footprint, which is the kind of detail a player who follows the ACMA’s list can verify directly but which is rarely surfaced on affiliate marketing pages promoting the brand.

Jackbit — the most recent Ryker B.V. warning

The ACMA issued a formal warning to Ryker B.V. over Jackbit and CasinOK in April 2026. Jackbit has built its public identity around crypto deposits and crypto-denominated reload bonuses, which for an Australian player sits on the wrong side of the credit-card and crypto ban that applies to licensed wagering. A reload offer paid in coin does not change the legal status of the site; it changes only the payment rail.

Casino Intense — the Sterplay action

Casino Intense was the subject of a formal warning to Sterplay Holding Ltd in April 2025. It is the kind of smaller offshore brand that lives on a handful of affiliate review pages and a Curacao-issued licence badge. Its reload bonus, where it appears, follows the standard offshore shape.

Sky Crown — the Hollycorn cluster

Sky Crown was the subject of a formal warning to Hollycorn N.V. alongside Blue Leo. Hollycorn is one of the more prolific operators in the offshore segment, with a portfolio of casino brands that surface and disappear from ACMA lists in waves. A reload offer on Sky Crown is the same shape as on every other Hollycorn brand, and a player who has seen one has functionally seen them all.

Reload bonuses aimed at Australian players — More on this topic at casino deposit.

How the Australian market actually looks at a reload offer

The market an Australian reload-bonus search hits is not a market of licensed competitors. It is a market of unlicensed offshore operators competing with each other for a player pool no Australian regulator has authorised them to serve. The consequence shows up in three places: the licence badge the site displays, the regulator the site answers to, and what happens when the player decides to leave with a balance.

The licence badge and what it does not mean

The licence badge on an offshore casino site is almost always a Curacao-issued licence, occasionally a Kahnawake or an Anjouan licence, very rarely anything else. None of those licences authorise the operator to take Australian customers. The licence authorises the operator to operate from the licensing jurisdiction, and to accept customers from jurisdictions that have not specifically prohibited the operator’s product. Australia has specifically prohibited the product — online casino games and online pokies, named in the Interactive Gambling Act 2001 — and no offshore licence overrides that. The badge is real, in the sense that the licence exists. It is meaningless, in the sense that it does not authorise what the site is doing with Australian players.

The regulator and the absence of one

A licensed Australian wagering service answers to the Northern Territory Racing and Wagering Commission, which regulates 52 of Australia’s online bookmakers including Sportsbet, Bet365 and Ladbrokes, all licensed in the Territory for tax reasons. The commission has no full-time staff and meets once a month in Darwin. It is a small body regulating a small number of large operators in the part of the market that is actually licensable. An offshore casino offering reload bonuses to Australians answers to no equivalent body, because the product it sells is not licensable in Australia in the first place.

The block, and what follows it

The ACMA has been ordering illegal offshore gambling sites blocked at the ISP level since November 2019. As reported in June 2026, 1,751 illegal gambling and affiliate marketing websites had been blocked since that first request, and more than 230 unlicensed gambling services had left the Australian market since enforcement was strengthened in 2017. In the round reported on 26 June 2026 alone, the ACMA asked Australian ISPs to block a further twelve sites: 7Signs, ChromaBet, Donbet, Duospin, Freshbet, Slots Gem, Jacks Club, Lucky Start, Pointsbetz.com, Spinrise, Vinyl Casino and Wildsino. The blocking rate, treated as a band rather than a single figure, runs roughly between fifteen and twenty-five site removals a month averaged across the period since the first blocking request — a steady removal rate rather than a one-off sweep, which is the shape of a regulator running a process rather than a campaign.

The arithmetic of that rate is the information the rest of the page was missing. Take the 1,751 blocked sites across the period from the first blocking request in November 2019 to the June 2026 figure, which is roughly eighty months. That works out to an average between twenty-one and twenty-three blocks a month, with the upper end of the band covering the months where multiple rounds were issued in quick succession and the lower end covering quieter periods. The numbers are not perfectly linear — some months see one round, some see two, and the round in June 2026 alone added twelve — but the band is the honest summary: each calendar month over the period has, on average, removed more than one offshore site from the Australian-facing internet, and most of those removals happen to sites that had been actively marketing to Australian players.

What a block does not return

A block does not return a balance. The site can be ordered blocked on a Wednesday, and a player who deposited on the Tuesday still has whatever was in the account at the time the site went dark. The ACMA’s blocking power extends to making the site harder to reach; it does not extend to seizing the operator’s assets or recovering customer funds. The licensed equivalent — BetStop’s binding exclusion from Australian wagering services — operates because the licensed operator is itself an Australian-licensed entity with Australian-held funds. An offshore operator holds the funds in its own jurisdiction, under its own contract, and the contract is between the player and the operator on the operator’s terms.

The estimate of what is being lost

H2 Gambling Capital’s 2025 report estimates that Australians lose about A$3.9 billion a year to illegal gambling sites, and that the share of gambling going through legal channels in Australia fell from 74% in 2021 to 64% in 2025. The share has dropped by ten percentage points in four years, which is the kind of movement that reflects the offshore segment growing rather than the licensed segment shrinking in absolute terms. A reload bonus is a small piece of that A$3.9 billion figure, but it is a piece the operator invested in: every percentage point of bonus match is a marketing spend aimed at a player already depositing, and the spend has to come back as expected losses or the operator’s bonus line does not pay.

The legal frame an Australian player actually sits inside

The Interactive Gambling Act 2001, as strengthened by the Interactive Gambling Amendment Act 2017, makes it an offence to provide online casino games, online pokies or in-play betting to a person in Australia. No state or territory licenses these products. The minimum age for any licensed interactive wagering service in Australia is 18. The IGA targets the provider, not the player: an individual Australian who deposits at an offshore casino is not prosecuted. The site itself, and any person operating it from inside Australia, is the target of the prohibition. What the player loses by being on the wrong side of the prohibition is not the threat of prosecution; it is the absence of protection.

The Interactive Gambling Amendment (Gambling Reform) Bill 2026 passed Parliament on 19 August 2026 and introduces new measures on advertising and inducements. The inducement provisions commence on 1 January 2027, which means the law exists at the time of writing but the inducement clauses are not yet in force on a page dated inside 2026. For an Australian-facing offshore operator the 2027 commencement is the point at which the inducement language on its reload bonus emails — the matched-deposit headlines, the free-spin offers, the “exclusive Australian welcome back” subject lines — moves from being unregulated by the new regime to being actively prohibited by it. The offshore operator is not bound by Australian law in any direct sense, but the intermediaries it relies on — Australian payment processors, Australian ISPs, Australian advertising platforms — are, and that is where the 2027 commencement bites.

On the tax side, gambling winnings of a recreational player are not assessable income in Australia and losses are not deductible, unless the person carries on a business of gambling. The wording of the rule is the wording of the Australian Taxation Office: recreational player, not assessable, not deductible. A player whose gambling moves from recreational to professional finds themselves in a different tax position and should check with the ATO rather than rely on this summary.

The position the rest of this page lands on

Reload bonuses are a marketing construct, not a reward, and they cost the player who accepts them in expected losses plus the structural cost of playing on an unlicensed site. For Australians the cost is double, because there is no licensed version of the offer to compare against and no Australian recourse if the operator decides to keep a balance. The ACMA’s blocking work has been steady for more than six years — on average between twenty and twenty-five site removals a month since November 2019 — and the inducement provisions due to commence on 1 January 2027 will tighten what is and is not permitted around the offer itself. None of that changes the underlying arithmetic: the bonus is credit, the requirement is the price of converting it, and the offshore site is one ACMA order away from going dark with whatever is left in the account.

The licensed alternative for an Australian who wants to wager is a racing or sports bookmaker licensed in the Northern Territory, where the activity is wagering before the event, not casino games. There is no licensed Australian reload bonus on online pokies because there are no licensed Australian online pokies. A player who finds that the boundary between the licensed and unlicensed sides of the market is harder to hold than they expected should contact the National Gambling Helpline on 1800 858 858, free and 24 hours a day, or use Gambling Help Online chat. BetStop’s National Self-Exclusion Register excludes from licensed wagering services for a chosen period. Neither service judges the caller for asking.

Frequently asked questions

What is a reload bonus, and how does it differ from a welcome bonus?

A reload bonus is a matched deposit or free-spin offer aimed at an existing customer, where a welcome bonus is the same shape of offer aimed at a new one. The mechanics are identical: a wagering multiplier, game weighting, a maximum bet rule, an expiry window and a free-spin cap. The difference is who the offer is for, and reload offers tend to carry higher wagering requirements than welcome offers because the marketing cost is paid against a player who has already deposited at least once.

Why do some casinos brand repeat-deposit offers as a “reload” specifically?

The word is marketing. It positions a repeat deposit as something the player is doing to “reload” an account they have already chosen, which is friendlier language than a second sign-up. Mechanically there is nothing different about a reload versus any other matched-deposit offer, and the term is used by bitcoin casinos and traditional card casinos alike because the structure is the same. The condition set behind the reload word is what costs the player, not the word itself.

Is accepting a reload bonus from an offshore casino any different, legally, to accepting its welcome bonus?

No. The Interactive Gambling Act 2001 prohibits the supply of online casino games and online pokies to a person in Australia by any operator not licensed to do so, and the prohibition does not turn on whether the offer is a welcome bonus, a reload bonus, a free-spin bundle or a cashback. The player is not the target of the IGA in either case; the operator is. What differs is the player’s exposure: an offshore site is not bound by Australian consumer protection, has no Australian complaints body to answer to, and can be ordered blocked with a balance still on it regardless of which offer was being claimed.

How often do offshore casinos run reload bonuses for existing players?

Most offshore casinos run some form of weekly or weekend reload, often layered with a free-spin bundle and tied to a specific payment method. The cadence is set by the operator’s marketing budget rather than by regulation, and the headline figures tend to be smaller than welcome bonuses because the player is no longer a new acquisition. The wagering requirement behind a weekly reload is usually higher than the welcome offer, which is the operator’s way of pricing the fact that the player has already shown they will deposit.

Does a reload bonus on pokies carry the same wagering terms as the welcome offer?

Almost always no. Reload offers tend to carry a higher wagering multiplier than welcome offers, often in a narrower expiry window, and frequently with a smaller maximum-bet cap. The reason is the same on every operator: the marketing cost of retaining a player is paid against an expected loss, and a higher multiplier is the operator’s way of recovering that cost on the second deposit rather than the first.

What happens to an unused reload offer if the player does not deposit again in time?

It expires. Reload offers carry an expiry window, commonly seven days from issue and sometimes shorter for the free-spin bundle. Once expired, the bonus and any winnings attributable to it are forfeited under the operator’s terms. A player who decides not to deposit in a given week loses the offer but does not lose any of their own money, because the bonus was credit rather than cash. The forfeiting clause is the same one that bites when a player tries to withdraw early: the operator’s terms decide what is and is not theirs to keep.