Purchase "pending" for 5 hours

[NoodleRecipe]

Bought an amount of money for my steam wallet over 5 hours ago. The purchase was on "pending" and was visible in my purchase history until now. Though I also bought a game after this, and now that game is pending, while the wallet purchase doesn't even show up on my purchase history anymore. (I'm sure that it didn't take money out of my wallet to buy this.)
It both got written off of my bank account but i cant see either of the purchases on Steam yet.

Is there anything I can do other than wait for more hours or is Steam/Valve currently having issues with payments? I emailed Steam Support, but it could take some days before they respond so..

[Cathulhu]

Ask your payment processor why they don't send the money to Steam.

[NoodleRecipe]

Originally posted by Cathulhu:

Ask your payment processor why they don't send the money to Steam.

Definitely going to do that. Though the fact that the wallet amount I purchased doesn't show up on my purchase history anymore is something only steam can fix, I think.
Really regretting not making a screenshot of when it was actually visible/on pending status

[dhjinn]

i have the same problem, but with giropay (german payment method). I wanted to add 5€ to my steam wallet, the transaction was later removed from my buying history after it was about 2 hours in progress. the money is not on my account yet. i think steam has some payment issues, i saw that many other people also have the same problem with other payment methods.

[NoodleRecipe]

Originally posted by Ɗhjinŋ:

i have the same problem, but with giropay (german payment method). I wanted to add 5€ to my steam wallet, the transaction was later removed from my buying history after it was about 2 hours in progress. the money is not on my account yet. i think steam has some payment issues, i saw that many other people also have the same problem with other payment methods.

Ah yea! Same issue with my wallet. (used iDeal) 10$ was supposed to be added but it seems to be gone completely. I did get an email saying the game i purchased afterwards failed though, so at least that's something i guess. Just don't know if it's the fault of Steam or from our payment methods.

If more people have the same issues I really hope Steam fixes it soon

[Hefaestos]

I had a similar issue about 4 hours before you opened this thread. Bought some DLC and iDeal payment "failed". Following advice from Steam I tried the payment again and it failed again. The items are still in the cart but not the library.

I contacted my bank and they told me that on their end everything worked fine, so I need to contact Steam to "solve it".

I know Valve is a multibillion corporation that does not care about me buying more games here or not, but a little bit better Customer Service would not hurt them that much. "There was a problem"... yeah, you took my money and did not give me what I paid for. Now can you give some information about what the problem is so I can fix it?

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Hefaestos:

I had a similar issue about 4 hours before you opened this thread. Bought some DLC and iDeal payment "failed". Following advice from Steam I tried the payment again and it failed again. The items are still in the cart but not the library.

I contacted my bank and they told me that on their end everything worked fine, so I need to contact Steam to "solve it".

I know Valve is a multibillion corporation that does not care about me buying more games here or not, but a little bit better Customer Service would not hurt them that much. "There was a problem"... yeah, you took my money and did not give me what I paid for. Now can you give some information about what the problem is so I can fix it?

Except Valve never got the money. "Failed" means "Your bank promised us the money, but then came back with a NOPE". That means that your money is within the iDeal system. They're the ones holding it ATM so it's up to them to tell you when it will return to your account (or whatever abstraction iDeal uses).

Is iDeal a bank or an intermediate payment processor? When thinking of something like PayPal, that takes the money from my bank account and hands it over to Valve, it's indeed possible that the bank sees nothing wrong but the money is on hold within PayPal's (or iDeal's, in this case) system. If iDeal is something like that, then it's entirely possible that everything is indeed all right from your bank's perspective, but sitting on some "to clean up on next scheduled maintenance"-shelf within iDeal.

[NoodleRecipe]

Originally posted by Hefaestos:

I had a similar issue about 4 hours before you opened this thread. Bought some DLC and iDeal payment "failed". Following advice from Steam I tried the payment again and it failed again. The items are still in the cart but not the library.

I contacted my bank and they told me that on their end everything worked fine, so I need to contact Steam to "solve it".

I know Valve is a multibillion corporation that does not care about me buying more games here or not, but a little bit better Customer Service would not hurt them that much. "There was a problem"... yeah, you took my money and did not give me what I paid for. Now can you give some information about what the problem is so I can fix it?

Totally agreed on the lack of information. Would be extremely helpful to know if it's Steam's problem or our Bank's because then we would only have to call Support for one of them instead of having to wait for both to respond, and probably telling us to "contact the other party" when I've already done that.

I just called my Bank as well, and they told me to wait for 3 days. The money should have been sent back to me in that time, but if it isn't I'd have to call them again. Thing is that it could be Valve's problem for not accepting the payment and then I'd be waiting for nothing. Really sucks that I don't exactly know where the issue lies.

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Hefaestos:

I had a similar issue about 4 hours before you opened this thread. Bought some DLC and iDeal payment "failed". Following advice from Steam I tried the payment again and it failed again. The items are still in the cart but not the library.

I contacted my bank and they told me that on their end everything worked fine, so I need to contact Steam to "solve it".

I know Valve is a multibillion corporation that does not care about me buying more games here or not, but a little bit better Customer Service would not hurt them that much. "There was a problem"... yeah, you took my money and did not give me what I paid for. Now can you give some information about what the problem is so I can fix it?

Except Valve never got the money. "Failed" means "Your bank promised us the money, but then came back with a NOPE". That means that your money is within the iDeal system. They're the ones holding it ATM so it's up to them to tell you when it will return to your account (or whatever abstraction iDeal uses). Is iDeal a bank or an intermediate payment processor? When thinking of something like PayPal, that takes the money from my bank account and hands it over to Valve, it's indeed possible that the bank sees nothing wrong but the money is on hold within PayPal's system. If iDeal is something like that, then it's entirely possible that everything is indeed all right from your bank's perspective, but sitting on some "to clean up on next scheduled maintenance"-shelf within iDeal.

I'm not really sure how to describe iDeal well, but I don't exactly think that it works the same way as Paypal. It serves as a way to pay with different banks here, sending the payment directly to that bank and then you're able to pay through that bank when you log in.

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Zerorice:

I'm not really sure how to describe iDeal well, but I don't exactly think that it works the same way as Paypal. It serves as a way to pay with different banks here, sending the payment directly to that bank and then you're able to pay through that bank when you log in.

So it's basically exactly like PayPal, for the current topic anyway. So yeah, your money's sitting somewhere on a shelf labeled "to clean up during the next scheduled maintenance" within iDeal. So call iDeal and ask them WTF is going on. That, or show some patience. You calling won't change a thing, you need to wait for iDeal to return the money to your bank, one way or another.

From the Steam side of things, the situation is abundandly clear: a failed purchase means Valve has received a "nope" instead of the money. Had Valve not received the money but not a "nope" either, the transaction would be pending (although pending transactions can time out as well, that takes days though).

[NoodleRecipe]

Originally posted by ReBoot:

Originally posted by Zerorice:

I'm not really sure how to describe iDeal well, but I don't exactly think that it works the same way as Paypal. It serves as a way to pay with different banks here, sending the payment directly to that bank and then you're able to pay through that bank when you log in.

So it's basically exactly like PayPal, for the current topic anyway. So yeah, your money's sitting somewhere on a shelf labeled "to clean up during the next scheduled maintenance" within iDeal. So call iDeal and ask them WTF is going on. That, or show some patience. You calling won't change a thing, you need to wait for iDeal to return the money to your bank, one way or another.

From the Steam side of things, the situation is abundandly clear: a failed purchase means Valve has received a "nope" instead of the money. Had Valve not received the money but not a "nope" either, the transaction would be pending (although pending transactions can time out as well, that takes days though).

Yeah I kind of worded myself wrong, iDeal pretty much IS the bank. All it does is sending the payment "request" to the bank, it doesn't hold any money itself.
Though I did call my bank, and I guess I indeed just need to wait, that's all I can do for now. Thanks for explaining all of this.

[Hefaestos]

The issue here is that no parties are providing enough information for us to take proper decisions. If there is a problem with my bank account or with iDeal payments in general, Steam could tell me outright so I won't attempt to make any more purchases making the problem worse.

In any case, I found in the iDeal website that in this scenario we need to request Valve to contact their "iDeal contract party" and provide some information. You can see it here: https://www.ideal.nl/en/consumers/frequently-asked-questions/ under "Problems with payments and delivery".

I also spotted a few threads being open in the forums around the same time with people with different payment methods having similar issues. If this is a hiccup on Steam's side, they could also advise us what to do.

[Lantern]

I'm having the same issue, where I made a purchase (using iDEAL), which was promptly withdrawn from my account and, according to the bank statement, sent to Steam's Dutch holding account (under the name 'Steampowered by GlobalCollect', IBAN: NL14 RABO 0155 5032 19).
The purchase was listed as "pending" for a few hours, until after 4 hours or so I got an email that said there was "an error" with the purchase, giving me the option of repurchasing, despite having already taken my money.

In my purchase history, it's still listed as 'Pending Purchase'. I've put in a support request last night (13-odd hours ago), but as yet no response. Updated it this morning as well with the failure message, but still no word.

My best guess at this time is that there's some sort of breakdown between Steam/Valve's local account and their global holdings, as there are no current reports of any issues with local banking or even at any specific banks.


Perhaps related, a purchase I made around 10 days ago, using iDEAL, also took much longer to process than usual. Around an hour, which was the first time I experienced anything like that with Steam.

My question now is, does this issue also occur when using PayPal and, if not, do I repurchase and hope I actually get the money back at some point?

[ReBoot]

Originally posted by Zerorice:

Originally posted by ReBoot:

So it's basically exactly like PayPal, for the current topic anyway. So yeah, your money's sitting somewhere on a shelf labeled "to clean up during the next scheduled maintenance" within iDeal. So call iDeal and ask them WTF is going on. That, or show some patience. You calling won't change a thing, you need to wait for iDeal to return the money to your bank, one way or another.

From the Steam side of things, the situation is abundandly clear: a failed purchase means Valve has received a "nope" instead of the money. Had Valve not received the money but not a "nope" either, the transaction would be pending (although pending transactions can time out as well, that takes days though).

Yeah I kind of worded myself wrong, iDeal pretty much IS the bank. All it does is sending the payment "request" to the bank, it doesn't hold any money itself.
Though I did call my bank, and I guess I indeed just need to wait, that's all I can do for now. Thanks for explaining all of this.

It's quite the difference whether iDeal is the bank (so it holds your money) or not.

If a bank claims they paid Valve your money (without any intermediaries) but the transaction is failed, that's still "Valve received NOPE instead of money", but would speak "highly" of the competence of said bank. Not that I haven't seen such cases on this forum either, but that's just not cool. To be honest, I really believe that the phone clerks answering such cases indeed don't know of anything as they're low-paid drones either unqualified to understand anything by themselves or kept low by the bank's management. On the other hand, those reports may stem from people not understanding the difference between an intermediary and their bank, so who knows...

If iDeal is NOT the bank, but a payment processor sitting between Valve and your bank, then your bank claiming everything's fine & dandy at their end is damn right to do so, because everything is in fact fine & dandy at their end and the payment intermediary is at fault.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Lantern:

I'm having the same issue, where I made a purchase (using iDEAL), which was promptly withdrawn from my account and, according to the bank statement, sent to Steam's Dutch holding account (under the name 'Steampowered by GlobalCollect', IBAN: NL14 RABO 0155 5032 19).
The purchase was listed as "pending" for a few hours, until after 4 hours or so I got an email that said there was "an error" with the purchase, giving me the option of repurchasing, despite having already taken my money.

In my purchase history, it's still listed as 'Pending Purchase'. I've put in a support request last night (13-odd hours ago), but as yet no response. Updated it this morning as well with the failure message, but still no word.

My best guess at this time is that there's some sort of breakdown between Steam/Valve's local account and their global holdings, as there are no current reports of any issues with local banking or even at any specific banks.


Perhaps related, a purchase I made around 10 days ago, using iDEAL, also took much longer to process than usual. Around an hour, which was the first time I experienced anything like that with Steam.

My question now is, does this issue also occur when using PayPal and, if not, do I repurchase and hope I actually get the money back at some point?

First off, yes it can happen WITH ANY payemtn online. They all use the same banking payments system, There is only one procedure.

However, it isn't as straightforward as that. I'll explain.

When you make a payment online, the vendor (Valve in this case) contacts the payments processor, and there's a brief time for the handshake to occur. When there are problems at either end, or there's considerable congestion (like at sales times), it can fail.

What happens in those circumstances is the money APPEARS to have left your account, but it doesn't. It is "set aside" so you can't use it again. It sits there and waits to see if the remainder of the transaction sorts itself through a backup system normally done in the wee hours.

If it doesn't then it will never come, but as a safeguard the money just sits there "set aside" normally for about 3 working days before finally becoming available again.

So you basically have two options.

(1) You can simply wait it out until it frees up again. Or
(2) Contact the payment provider and tell them the payment has failed. If they are a decent provider with well trained staff they can see this, and reverse the thing, and free up the funds instantly.

There is a caveat to this. Third party payment providers like Paysafe, Ideal etc often either won't have this facility or ability. So you may only be able to wait.

So, in this sesne , while it can happen to ANY payment provider, using people like Paypal or a first party bank is MUCH more preferable.

[Hefaestos]

As an update to my situation, I have just received confirmation that my payment went through. Similar to what Lantern mentioned, I guess. I will check if the software is really available before doing anything else. It seems that indeed the only solution is wait and cross fingers.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Hefaestos:

As an update to my situation, I have just received confirmation that my payment went through. Similar to what Lantern mentioned, I guess. I will check if the software is really available before doing anything else. It seems that indeed the only solution is wait and cross fingers.

No it isn't the only solution at all.

You can ALWAYS contact the payment providers.

It's just that many assume one can get answers out of Valve, and that's not the case.