Funds being pending are to protect Steam from dirty and fraudulent funds entering the Steam marketplace. Valve now waits until the monetary transaction is committed before finalizing the sale of the item.

That said, never rely on Steam Marketplace revenue to get a timed sale. Instead, use the revenue for something else later.

Because of the financial risk of fraud, this is never going to change, only potentially going to become worse over time as fraudsters seek more ways to launder and steal money unscathed.

Imagine someone buying the item with fraudulent money. The money gets withdrawn from Valve. Now Valve has to take the money away from you, but can't give you the item back because the item could have been resold by that scammer in the meantime to someone innocent who bought it with legitimate funds.

To prevent this from happening, Valve waits until the buyer's bank finalizes the transaction, making it impossible to undo before handing out the item to the buyer and the money to the seller.

This is always triggered if someone buys your item and has recently topped up their wallet balance using a new payment method.

I understand your point, but if the issue is with verifying the buyer’s payment, how is that the seller’s fault? Why should the seller have to deal with delays when the items have been legitimately owned and listed for a long time?

It feels like this system complicates things for both the seller and the buyer, even though there are surely other ways to verify payments or flag suspicious transactions without holding everyone’s funds for days.

Originally posted by xöx:

I understand your point, but if the issue is with verifying the buyer’s payment, how is that the seller’s fault? Why should the seller have to deal with delays when the items have been legitimately owned and listed for a long time?

Because Valve is unwilling to shoulder the consequences of fraudulent transactions, that is why everyone has to wait. Otherwise, the transaction cannot be undone because it would harm other transactions that followed the unverified (and potentially fraudulent) one. Items can change hands fast.

Originally posted by Ettanin:

Originally posted by xöx:

I understand your point, but if the issue is with verifying the buyer’s payment, how is that the seller’s fault? Why should the seller have to deal with delays when the items have been legitimately owned and listed for a long time?

Because Valve is unwilling to shoulder the consequences of fraudulent transactions, that is why everyone has to wait. Otherwise, the transaction cannot be undone because it would harm other transactions that followed the unverified (and potentially fraudulent) one. Items can change hands fast.

A platform worth billions of dollars, and we still can’t have an efficient and personalized transaction system in 2025...
Valve could adopt a transaction model similar to what most crypto platforms use one that allows secure, instant transfers without holding the funds unnecessarily, while still ensuring transaction integrity.

Blockchains do not protect Valve from withdrawn money because the bank involved in the payment said the payment was illegitimate.

The only protection that Valve has is to wait until the payment is finalized on the payer's side.

Originally posted by Ettanin:

Blockchains do not protect Valve from withdrawn money because the bank involved in the payment said the payment was illegitimate.

The only protection that Valve has is to wait until the payment is finalized on the payer's side.

I appreciate the fraud prevention goals, but the current approach (automatic holds until buyer finalization) is blunt and harms UX for legitimate internal transactions. Since funds sold on the Marketplace remain on Steam and are not externally withdrawn.
Cold you consider a risk‑based model that:
• Whitelists long‑standing, verified seller accounts;
• Applies shorter holds for low‑value sales;
• Flags only transactions where the buyer used a brand‑new payment method or has a recent history of chargebacks.

These measures would preserve fraud protection while dramatically reducing delays for users.


But....it´s steam....it is what it is....

The other solution is to make it mandatory to top up wallet balance before any purchase if the balance is not enough and force the wallet balance buyer to wait, but that's, from a marketing standpoint, even worse UX, because it will kill any potential purchase outright. Hence we got the system as it is. And no, it's not going to change.