Valve to no longer offer physical gift cards due to scammers

Quoting: rea987This doesn't clarify the digital cards being sold in 3rd party sites. Since my country of origin is different than my country of residence, same applies to my Steam account, hence I am not able use my debit card with my Steam account. Therefore, I need to use Steam wallet codes sold in 3rd party sides. If that's ending, this will affect me greatly...

You can change the registered country of your Steam account every 6 months. However if you have some games with region block you may not be able to play them anymore, Steam may refuse to launch them.

At least for Europe, I still don't understand why credit-card and 3rd party payment platforms have to be involved at all. Shouldn't IBAN transfers be able to replace it all with a bit of metadata in the message field?

Quoting: LoudTechie[/
American Express, Discover, JCB, PayPal, Wero(for european customers), PaysafeCard and Klarna are all still options.

But Wero is not offered yet, right?

No one else is asking this, but I'm not sure how exactly removing physical cards will make things safer as opposed to digital ones. In physical stores, there are people that can step in and prevent someone from being scammed, while if they are instructed to purchase the cards online, there is less of a chance for an outside observer to step in, and it won't give them as much time to figure out they're being duped. I know Steam's website can still issue the same warnings that stores are putting on signs, but I haven't purchased a gift card online before so I'm not entirely sure.

Last edited by MrBelles on 10 Jun 2026 at 7:12 pm UTC

I've never had to do this, but I know MoneyGram has something like 500K locations world wide. It's an anchor (onramp/offramp real world money) for the Stellar blockchain. You can get a Decaf.so Visa through the Decaf.so app. So it would be cash -> MoneyGram(USDC) -> decaf.so wallet. Then load your Decaf.so Visa with USDC. Decaf.so will handle exchanging currencies for you. I've not used MoneyGram as an anchor. I mention it because it's world wide. Normally for my Anchor I use Coinbase.

I know this solution isn't anonymous but, it should help some of you.

Last edited by Highball on 10 Jun 2026 at 7:56 pm UTC

Quoting: MrBellesNo one else is asking this, but I'm not sure how exactly removing physical cards will make things safer as opposed to digital ones. In physical stores, there are people that can step in and prevent someone from being scammed, while if they are instructed to purchase the cards online, there is less of a chance for an outside observer to step in, and it won't give them as much time to figure out they're being duped. I know Steam's website can still issue the same warnings that stores are putting on signs, but I haven't purchased a gift card online before so I'm not entirely sure.

I don't think Valve or any one involved is worried about people being scammed in stores. The scams happen through private sellers and the second hand market. The reason physical cards are prime scam targets are many:

- they don't disappear once used
- it's impossible to check whether they've been used
- often people likely to buy cards are also more susceptible to be scammed (kids for example)
- they're hard to trace
- by the time the scam is discovered, the scammer is long gone

Quoting: PyrateThe thing I initially wanted to highlight by mentioning the years is that we already have these technologies that can enable our freedoms, but for reasons, including convenience and laziness, we choose to ignore them.

To be fair I ignore Bitcoin because of the environmental devastation and human costs (try living next to a "bitcoin mine".) It's actually considered a feature that it uses more electricity the longer it goes on.

Quoting: MrBellesNo one else is asking this, but I'm not sure how exactly removing physical cards will make things safer as opposed to digital ones. In physical stores, there are people that can step in and prevent someone from being scammed, while if they are instructed to purchase the cards online, there is less of a chance for an outside observer to step in, and it won't give them as much time to figure out they're being duped. I know Steam's website can still issue the same warnings that stores are putting on signs, but I haven't purchased a gift card online before so I'm not entirely sure.

For a variety of reasons, scammers instruct victims to go withdraw cash first, and use that to purchase the cards, which are also physical items. It makes the whole thing less traceable and much less reversible; even if the fraud is picked up on quickly, the cash spent can't be traced to the cards purchased to remotely disable them and remove their value unless and until the victim returns to the store where the purchase was made and that store can find the transaction and has a record of the card numbers that can be passed on to Steam/the card issuer.

Quoting: Carolly

Quoting: PyrateThe thing I initially wanted to highlight by mentioning the years is that we already have these technologies that can enable our freedoms, but for reasons, including convenience and laziness, we choose to ignore them.

To be fair I ignore Bitcoin because of the environmental devastation and human costs (try living next to a "bitcoin mine".) It's actually considered a feature that it uses more electricity the longer it goes on.

This is very true, in addition to the environmental concerns, because Bitcoin can be mined by ASICs, it also leads to centralization and monopoly of the mining the coin, which goes very much against one of the core principals that 'anyone can contribute with their consumer CPU'. Again, Monero fixes this by making mining on ASICs extremely inefficient nobody does it, people are mining on Ryzens for the most part. No farms in the scale that Bitcoin allows are possible.

Poor Grandma, now she has to figure out a new gift for Timmy on his birthday.

Plus all those poor kids that save their lunch money from school to gamble on the Steam marketplace in Counter-Strike 2.

guess i won't be buying steam games anymore

I remember when Steam accepted Bitcoin.

Some things are just too good for the people to have.

Quoting: Pyrate[...] What I referred to when I said 2014 was Monero, you can think of it as the cash equivalent of Linux, PGP, the Tor network, and all the other foundational privacy-preserving projects.

The thing I initially wanted to highlight by mentioning the years is that we already have these technologies that can enable our freedoms, but for reasons, including convenience and laziness, we choose to ignore them.

I never used it, because it has major issues like requiring a lot of energy and all transactions stay public visible. Once they know who you are, all your history is also visible and not just one transaction deanonymized, but all at once. It is also an object for bad people highjacking other peoples PC to farm coins (I even knew a homepage doing it) or speculating with the money or using it for illegal activities (and unlike dark net it has not so many positive effects).

It is clearly not equal to Linux, PGP, TOR Project etc, even if original it was meant to be such. I still honor the idea and work, but the plan was bad from begin on, we just leaned and saw it some time later. GNU-Taler on the other hand is like all the privacy tools you mentioned. It is free software, decentralized, anonymous for private people, collecting companies data for tax. It is also lightweight and does not introduce another currency (1:1 translation of the real currency - always). If we can spread the idea, we may get new payment options for Steam, GOG, and all others at some point. Would reduce the nightmare of not being able to pay without the man in the middle that accesses our bank accounts...

Last edited by PlayingOnLinuxphone on 11 Jun 2026 at 4:17 am UTC

Quoting: LoudTechieAmerican Express, Discover, JCB, PayPal, Wero(for european customers), PaysafeCard and Klarna are all still options.

What region are you in that Steam offers you Wero?

A shame. I'd been using them for a while in response to payment processors trying to play nanny state.

It is still possible to top up your Steam wallet with the digital gift cards, although this allows your card provider (and all their data sharing partners) to see behaviorally how you use Steam.

Quoting: GustyGhostA shame. I'd been using them for a while in response to payment processors trying to play nanny state.

It is still possible to top up your Steam wallet with the digital gift cards, although this allows your card provider (and all their data sharing partners) to see behaviorally how you use Steam.

Quoting: GustyGhostA shame. I'd been using them for a while in response to payment processors trying to play nanny state.

It is still possible to top up your Steam wallet with the digital gift cards, although this allows your card provider (and all their data sharing partners) to see behaviorally how you use Steam.

Not really though right? They can see how much money you spend in aggregate, but not what you spend it on. That at least removes the concern of them tracing what games you buy/play.

Quoting: GustyGhostA shame. I'd been using them for a while in response to payment processors trying to play nanny state.

It is still possible to top up your Steam wallet with the digital gift cards, although this allows your card provider (and all their data sharing partners) to see behaviorally how you use Steam.

Quoting: GustyGhostA shame. I'd been using them for a while in response to payment processors trying to play nanny state.

It is still possible to top up your Steam wallet with the digital gift cards, although this allows your card provider (and all their data sharing partners) to see behaviorally how you use Steam.

Not really though right? They can see how much money you spend in aggregate, but not what you spend it on. That at least removes the concern of them tracing what games you buy/play.

Quoting: PlayingOnLinuxphone

Quoting: Pyrate[...] What I referred to when I said 2014 was Monero, you can think of it as the cash equivalent of Linux, PGP, the Tor network, and all the other foundational privacy-preserving projects.

The thing I initially wanted to highlight by mentioning the years is that we already have these technologies that can enable our freedoms, but for reasons, including convenience and laziness, we choose to ignore them.

I never used it, because it has major issues like requiring a lot of energy and all transactions stay public visible. Once they know who you are, all your history is also visible and not just one transaction deanonymized, but all at once. It is also an object for bad people highjacking other peoples PC to farm coins (I even knew a homepage doing it) or speculating with the money or using it for illegal activities (and unlike dark net it has not so many positive effects).

It is clearly not equal to Linux, PGP, TOR Project etc, even if original it was meant to be such. I still honor the idea and work, but the plan was bad from begin on, we just leaned and saw it some time later. GNU-Taler on the other hand is like all the privacy tools you mentioned. It is free software, decentralized, anonymous for private people, collecting companies data for tax. It is also lightweight and does not introduce another currency (1:1 translation of the real currency - always). If we can spread the idea, we may get new payment options for Steam, GOG, and all others at some point. Would reduce the nightmare of not being able to pay without the man in the middle that accesses our bank accounts...

Your first paragraph describes Bitcoin with its transparency that compromises one's privacy because all one's transactions are transparent on a public ledger. Monero doesn't do that, it has 3 distinct technologies that obfuscate the sender, the transaction amount, and receiver.

Using money for illegal activity isn't something new, if you apply the same standard elsewhere, guess what kind of money you shouldn't use anymore because it gets used in ransom and money laundering ? That's right, cash. Monero is in fact used in darknet markets and such, a fact I and you can hate all we want, but it is proof that the technology works. There is a bigger discussion about how criminals are the first to adopt technology for their nefarious activities, it's nothing new at all.

I'd like for you to first learn about Monero and disassociate it from Bitcoin when you claim it's not equal to the privacy-preserving projects I mentioned.

I'll read more about GNU-Taler, but the concept of not accepting a new currency is a different topic we can indulge in. I mentioned the privacy side of using Monero, in addition to its openness in that anyone can have a wallet for free, and become their own bank account in that sense. Now, why introduce a new currency ? The first question I'd ask is why not, like what's the big deal in doing so ? Fiat currencies aren't this set-in-stone thing when you realise central banks can print as much as they want, devaluing your own money via inflation. Governments and central banks can print all the banknotes they want without any proof of work to show for it, as time goes on, your salary, while remaining unchanged numerically, continuously depreciates in value and purchasing power. What Bitcoin introduced is a way to create money through real and verifiable proof of work through electricity that can be performed by individuals in a decentralised manner, and this was later fixed so only regular consumer CPUs and not massive ASIC machines can mine with Monero. The promise is to provide the people their own sense of money that they fully own, independent of any government, while protecting your right to privacy. It is as grass roots and pure as any of the privacy preserving projects I mentioned. It pretty much achieves the mission described in the Cypherpunk's Manifesto from 1993, the same initiative that led to the development of PGP and the Tor network, technologies that are also decentralised, off the grid, and used by criminals and righteous people alike.

Journalists, whistleblowers and freedom fighters use Monero. I will look into GNU-Taler like I said, but I suspect there'd be a massive reason why I never heard about it before in all my research, including none of the kind of people that need privacy the most.