Steam payment headaches grow as PayPal is no longer usable for much of the world: Valve hopes to bring it back in the future, 'but the timeline is uncertain'

Hassles with credit card processors over adult content isn't the only payment headache Steam is facing these days. Valve is also getting grief from PayPal, which is no longer being accepted as a form of payment in much of the world.

Going by posts about the problem in the Steam subreddit, the issue was first reported about a month ago: Users attempting to pay for purchases in countries including Switzerland, Poland, Norway, and Mexico received a message saying Steam is "temporarily unable to process transactions with this payment method at this time," with no further explanation.

paypal temporarily disabled since? from r/Steam

The PayPal exclusion seemed to go largely unnoticed outside of discussions on the Steam subreddit, possibly because it seemed sporadic, and perhaps also because this was right around the time Steam got caught up in a kerfuffle with Visa and Mastercard over adult content on the platform. Valve delisted a substantial number of games after being notified that some of them "may violate the rules and standards set forth by our payment processors and their related card networks and banks." Indie-focused platform Itch.io later deindexed a number of games on its storefront for the same reason.

Some in the Steam subreddit theorized that the Paypal problem was connected to the crackdown on NSFW games, and maybe it is, but Valve has now clarified that the issue isn't game content, but the specific currencies being used: Redditor jeeg123 shared a popup message that's being displayed when Steam rejects PayPal as a payment system:

"In early July 2025, PayPal notified Valve that their acquiring bank for payment transactions in certain currencies was immediately terminating the processing of any transactions related to Steam. This affects Steam purchases using PayPal in currencies other than EUR, CAD, GBP, JPY, AUD and USD," the message states.

"We hope to offer PayPal as an option for these currencies in the future but the timeline is uncertain. We are also evaluating adding additional payment methods on Steam for the customers affected by this. In the meantime, please use one of our other current payment methods during checkout. If you can't use any of the available options, you can consider using a Steam Wallet code to add funds to your account."

An identical message was recently added to the Steam Support site.

To clarify one potential point of confusion, the currency-based restriction does exclude some EU nations: Steam users in Poland, for instance, which still uses the złoty as its official currency, are unable to use PayPal for Steam purchases despite the country being part of the EU.

Valve was quite pointed in its response when Mastercard attempted to deflect the blame for the removal of NSFW games on Steam, and its relative silence on this PayPal problem leads me to suspect that the two issues are unrelated. So too is the fact that GBP remains one of the accepted currencies: Given the UK's Online Safety Act legislation, I would think that anyone concerned about the potential sale of adult games to minors would have that currency at the top of the "no thanks" list.

So this is where we are: We know why PayPal is no longer available in large parts of the world, but we don't know why. Which quite frankly is not a terribly unusual state of affairs for Valve. I've reached out to ask and will update if I receive a reply.