Seems like most sites will gladly take your money but are hesitant to send you money if you win. It always seem like there is some reason why they cannot send you money in a timely manner.
paypal and Dwolla have a pretty good system to see if money can be withdrawn and deposited into your bank account. To set up your account on either one of them, they send you 2 small deposits of less than 20 cents each.
After you get the 2 deposits, you get on their site and tell them what the 2 amounts were. After you tell them, they withdraw both amounts to see if they can actually get money if you need to link an account to pay for something through their site.I am not saying that sites should use PayPal or Dwolla (PayPal even considers the sweepstakes club sites from using their service. NLOP CardPlayer poker was denied use of their service after one payout to their members. PayPal considers sweepstakes sites as
gambling) but maybe implement this thinking into considering whether to accept a first time deposit.
There should be no reason that if you can deposit a minimum of $20, why you can't withdraw a minimum of $20. This is the main reason I do not deposit money on any of the sites available to United States players. What if I want to try playing for money for the first time and I find out that I am not as good as I thought , imagine that : ) , but manage to get back up to the $20 I deposited. I can't quit until I can turn the 20 into 50 or whatever the minimum withdraw is.
One other reason is at any given moment, any of these sites that I can play on could be shut down.
online poker legality is a gray area and it wouldn't take much to shut all the sites down.