How to Fix Pending Transaction Steam Error

Wondering how you can fix pending transaction Steam error?

Over the years, buying games has adapted into something much less personal. While some people do prefer and miss going out to a nearby store to buy themselves a video game, the online change is very much welcome for us introverts.

Steam is one of the world’s most famous and iconic video game distributing platforms. For desktop and laptop gamers, the black-themed platform is also home to a ton of summer and winter sales.

Unfortunately, you have come across an error where your transaction remains pending. Why is this, and what can you do to fix it? In this article, we’ll be guiding you through a couple of methods that you can use to fix this issue. Here’s how you can fix pending transaction Steam error.

Let’s get started.

• 1. Check Steam’s Servers.
• 2. Cancel Other Pending Transactions.
• 3. Buy Your Game Through Your Browser.
• 4. Disable Your VPN or Proxy Settings.
• 5. Try Another Payment Method.

1. Check Steam’s Servers.

This step is often bypassed and forgotten by most people. However, any kind of server can still run to issues, even if it’s from Steam. Checking for Steam’s server status before anything is a really important step that can save you a lot of time and headaches.

By verifying if Steam’s servers are under maintenance, you’ll be able to spare yourself the effort of trying to fix and fiddle with settings on your end. If Steam’s servers are down, you won’t be able to fix and connect to the server no matter what you do.

Now, there are a couple of ways that you can check for the status of Steam’s servers. A common way to do it is through unofficial Steam server updates, like this through this Twitter page.

Other users also prefer the Steamstat website, which is pretty useful since you can check on specific Steam game servers as well. But for us at Saint, we prefer checking through Downdetector.

The problem with waiting for an update from a single account or website is that it can take a while before they notice Steam is acting up. However, Downdetector collects reports made by its community and displays the number of reports on its website.

This way, you’ll easily find out if other people are having the same problem you’re facing. If Steam’s servers are indeed the cause of the problem, you’ll have to wait until it’s fixed to proceed.

2. Cancel Other Pending Transactions.

Another common error that people run into is that their accounts are usually full of pending transactions. Depending on how suspicious your activity is or on other factors that help Steam monitor your account, buying games might take a while.

It’s a pretty easy fix to cancel your other pending transactions and give your profile a clean check-out cart. Once you’ve canceled your pending transactions, go ahead and buy your game again to see if that fixes the problem.

Here’s how you can cancel other pending transactions:

1. First, go to this link and log into your Steam account to access the purchases page.
2. Any pending transactions should be displayed there, along with other necessary purchasing information. Scroll down and click on View complete purchasing history.

3. Everything you’ve bought from Steam should be displayed on your screen, including a bunch of pending transactions. Click on the transactions that you would like to cancel.
4. From there, select Cancel this transaction and a prompt should appear asking you to confirm. Click on Cancel this purchase to fully cancel these pending transactions.

When you’re done with all that, you can go back to Steam and restart the application. Once that’s done, log back into your account and try to buy a game to see if the issue has been fixed. Alternatively, you can also stay and purchase the game on your browser. This will be expounded in the next method.

3. Buy Your Game Through Your Browser.

Besides buying the game on your Steam client, you can also try purchasing the game on your browser. Although using either method shouldn’t make a difference, websites are generally more reliable when making transactions.

You might notice this if you’re the type to do microtransactions, but you’ll almost always get redirected to a website when confirming a purchase. The same thing applies to Steam. Perhaps by buying your game through the browser, the process will be better.

Here’s how you can buy your game through your browser:

1. Start by opening up the Steam website.
2. You should be on the Store page by default, if not then just navigate to it from the navigation or menu bar.
3. Once you’re there, utilize the search bar to your right and type in the game that you want to buy.

4. Finally, scroll down and select Add to cart. Follow the prompts, choose the billing method, and that should purchase the game for you.

Let us know if this method worked out for you by commenting down below! Additionally, you can also try clearing Steam’s browser cache files and buying the game through the Steam app if this method didn’t work for you.

4. Disable Your VPN or Proxy Settings.

Being secure is a privilege that not a lot of people get to experience. With the increasing commodity of the internet, safeguarding your digital information has become just as important, if not more.

When VPNs were first commercially introduced, it became a great way for people to protect their browsing and personal information while scouring through the internet. However, what most people might not know is that VPNs used to be something that only hackers or internet terrorists would use.

Since VPNs hide your personal information, this was a prominent tool for internet crime. This is exactly why highly secure servers, like Steam, is probably blocking your VPN connection right now. Try disabling your VPN connection and purchasing the game again.

However, since third-party VPNs are all unique and interfaced differently, we will be unable to provide a general set of instructions to help you disable your VPN. You’ll either have to Google the steps yourself or ask a family member to help you.

5. Try Another Payment Method.

Giving another credit or debit card a shot might be worth the extra hassle. Sometimes payment methods like Paypal or your default MasterCard can jam or malfunction. This might be a problem with the system or a delay in the request.

Either way, you can try to hook up a different payment method on your Steam account and purchase the game with that card. Before you do so, make sure you’ve canceled all pending transactions beforehand so that you won’t make a double purchase.

There are a couple of ways to add a payment method to your account. For one, you can do it through either the Steam app or with their website. Now, we understand that linking your credit cards can be a huge deal, which is why we’ll be redirecting you to Steam’s guide for this instead.

This is to ensure that any changes to the system will not affect the age of this article. Here’s where you can find Steam’s guide to adding another payment method.

Now that you’ve reached the end of this article, we hope to have helped you fix pending transaction Steam error. If you have any questions, feel free to leave us a comment down below.

If this guide helped you, please share it. 🙂