(The following story is an analysis of recent news events relating to online poker.)

NETeller’s delay in paying account-holders who want to withdraw funds is likely not because the e-wallet giant doesn’t want to pay, but because it can’t.

And the likely reason it can’t?

Because it doesn’t have the money.

A bank doesn’t keep every dollar of its depositors’ funds immediately at hand in the bank vault; it loans out some of the money and invests some of it.

A bank can do that because it knows that on any given day, most of its depositors will not be withdrawing funds.

If, however, all or even most of a bank’s customers decide on the same day to withdraw all their funds from their bank accounts, the bank would not be able to immediately accomodate all the withdrawal requests, because it wouldn’t have enough money.

With much of its capital tied up in loans and investments, the bank would run out of money before it could quickly pay out on all withdrawal requests.

That doesn’t mean, of course, that the bank doesn’t have the money, just that it doesn’t have it all in one place at one time.

Eventually, the bank could come up with the money, if indeed all or most customers withdrew funds at once.

But it would take time.

And that’s likely what’s going on with NETeller (www.neteller.com), the Internet’s largest electronic money-transferring service, which was formerly used by many online poker players in the U.S. to send monies to and from their favorite online poker rooms.

After NETeller’s two Canadian founders were arrested on money laundering and gambling charges by the U.S. Feds earlier this month, U.K.-based NETeller shut off the U.S. market from gambling transactions.

Most U.S. customers, since they could no longer use NETeller to send funds to and from online gambling sites, then attempted to empty their NETeller accounts.

Instead of giving everyone their money, though, NETeller “froze” U.S. customers’ accounts.

Days later, after a press inquiry, NETeller said everyone would get paid “within four to six weeks.”

A NETeller flack would give no further information and described the situation simply as a “backlog.”

And he might be right.

Although some Internet gamblers remain skeptical they’ll ever see their NETeller funds again, it’s likely NETeller couldn’t pay everyone immediately even if it wanted to.

It simply doesn’t have the money.

NETeller has thousands of customers, and they’ve got millions of dollars in NETeller accounts.

That money isn’t just sitting in those NETeller accounts, collecting no interest. NETeller no doubt has invested at least some, maybe most, of those monies in high-yield  accounts elsewhere such as money markets and the like—probably in banks and funds all over the world—and it will take time to get back what it needs to pay out all those withdrawal requests.

In the meantime, realize there is no reason to believe—yet—that NETeller will stiff U.S. customers wanting their funds.

If they don’t have those funds “within four to six weeks” though, that will be another matter.