Hi,
I recently added money to my Steam account using my Monzo card. I had no issues at all and had to verify the purchase in my Monzo app, which I did.
Upon doing this, I noticed that Steam had placed a “market ban” on my account for three days, meaning I was unable to purchase anything, sell anything or trade anything on the Steam Community Market for three days. However, if I did not want to wait the three days, I could remove the “market ban” instantly by simply just verifying my bank card with Steam as a way of proving that the card is not stolen and that the funds are legitimate.
I attempted to begin the verification method with Steam, just to clarify, this is different to the verification method in the app where you have to “Approve” or “Deny” transactions with a timer. The way this verification process with Steam works, is that I begin the verification process by clicking a button, Steam is then supposed to send two authorisation charges to my bank (pending charges), of different amounts, that are no greater than £3 each. I am then supposed to input these amounts into Steam, to the precise amount, to prove that the funds are legitimate and not a result of fraud. This then removes my “market ban” and unlocks the funds for me to spend instantly.
However, this is where the problem began. I attempted to verify these funds using the method explained above on Steam, however, I kept getting a red error message saying that my bank has declined the small authorisation charges. I repeatedly tried this, same result. I decided to wait the three days thinking this will only be a one-time thing. I was wrong.
Fast forward to today, I added more funds to my Steam account, and my funds are, again, locked for another three days unless I can verify ownership of the card via the method I mentioned above. I try it again, same message. Ironically, none of these declined transactions appeared in my Monzo app. However, I go onto Monzo via a Web Browser, and not the app, and I can see all of the declined transactions from Steam, where Monzo have instantly declined the authorisation charges instantly whenever I try to begin the veification process on Steam.
This means that Monzo is the one who is instantly declining this, and it is not an issue with Steam. I am not sure as to why this is happening though, and I know other people on this forum, and personally, who are also having this same issue. It is impossible for us to verify our card on Steam because Monzo instantly declines the authorisation charges, even though they’re tiny amounts, so we can never begin the process on Steam as we can’t see the attempted authorisation charges to input them onto Steam.
I attempted to contact support about this, but they constantly get confused and repeatedly think I am talking about Monzo’s in-app verification system where you need to approve/deny transactions within a set period of time, even though I’ve explained countless times that I am not on about this verification system, and I have also sent them documentation and images that quickly and briefly explain how the Steam process works when verifying cards. However, somehow, they constantly circle back to Monzo’s in-app verification system.
Eventually, one of the advisors attempted to say that Monzo is legally required to verify all transactions before they go through. Now this does make sense - if it wasn’t for the fact that the transactions I need to verify my card with Steam are a minor £3, and Monzo quite literally lets me spend £50, £100, however much I want, at Steam, minutes later, without any verification requests needed.
This is an issue and I was hoping somebody, anybody, found a solution to this.
