Visa Gift Card Verification

[Papaw Greg]

I used a Visa gift card for steam money and it wont let me verify because i spent every dime of the card on steam. so i basically have no way of verifying the card. Any way around this. dont want to wait 3 days to use the steam wallet

[Zekiran]

The only way is to wait.

[xarvn]

If there is a telephone number on the back of the card, then you can contact VISA customer service. They may be able to resolve the problem.

[Zekiran]

Originally posted by xarvn:

If there is a telephone number on the back of the card, then you can contact VISA customer service. They may be able to resolve the problem.

Visa gift cards cannot be verified this way. They don't go through a bank, you just have to wait. It's 3 days. That's... hardly emergency level.

[xarvn]

An unfortunate issue arises when you try to buy something for the full face value of a Gift Card. Steam applies a $1 temporary authorization to verify authenticity of the card. Thereafter the full amount is charged. The temporary authorization disappears after a few days (I think it is a maximum of 5) but in the mean time, the card is overdrawn by one dollar. This is the real reason for the delay. In my limited experience, I've contacted CS representatives via the telephone numbers on the back of gift cards, and was able to resolve the matter very quickly. However, my experiences in no way are a guarantee of similar outcomes in all cases. Although attempting to do as I suggest requires some effort which may ultimately not lead to the desired result, I think that it should be up to the OP to decide if it is worth while based on the extent of his desire to not "wait 3 days"--which we cannot really know.

[ KARR™]

Originally posted by xarvn:

I think that it should be up to the OP to decide if it is worth while based on the extent of his desire to not "wait 3 days"--which we cannot really know.

Even if they removed any $1 auth on the card, to remove the 3 day hold, they would have to add TWO, NEW auths on the card, which would fail because the card is completely empty. They'd also need a way to view these auths so they knew how much they were for, which with most pre-pay cards you can't.

They can use the funds in the store NOW, but for the market, it looks like they are stuck with their 3 day wait.

[xarvn]

My experiences with using gift cards are admittedly not very extensive, and more importantly a bit antiquated. I also had not considered that the use case for funds to be spent on market items might be different from those of the store as  KARR™ has pointed out. I shall concede to his as well as Zekiran's more learned opinions. Please disregard my previous comments in this thread.

[ADiscountTaDaMon!]

I am necroing this post... But does not verifying the empty prepaid card mean it'll keep doing this to me in the future? If I did call the company that issued the prepaid, what could I say to get help with this? There's no answers online and it's annoying quite frankly how little there is

[cSg|mc-Hotsauce]

Originally posted by Discount TaDa #SaveTF2 Repeat.gg:

I am necroing this post... But does not verifying the empty prepaid card mean it'll keep doing this to me in the future? If I did call the company that issued the prepaid, what could I say to get help with this? There's no answers online and it's annoying quite frankly how little there is

An empty pre-paid card has no funds to use for verification so, yes.

[Samuel]

This thread was quite old before the recent post, so we're locking it to prevent confusion.