GoFundMe Charity processes all donations through PayPal Giving Fund and WePay, which are both fully PCI compliant. We follow industry standard best practices for security and fully encrypt all user data in transit.
Unrecognized charges
If you make a donation on GoFundMe Charity, your credit card charge will display an abbreviation of the payment processor your beneficiary is on, either PayPal Giving Fund or WePay. The payment processor the charity is signed up with will affect how the charge appears on your credit card statement.
If the charge is from PayPal Giving Fund, it will normally show up on your bank statement as PAYPAL *GFM* PPGF
If the charge is from WePay, it will normally show up on your statement as WPY*. You can search here for information about a WePay charge you don't recognize.
Keep in mind, cards can be compromised and used at any merchant across the web, and the most important thing to do if you notice a charge that might be unauthorized is to contact your card provider to report the use of the card. If this happens on GoFundMe Charity, you can also contact our team for additional help in getting those funds returned as soon as possible.
Phishing emails
If you receive an email claiming to originate from GoFundMe Charity and it looks suspicious, contains unfamiliar links, urgent requests, or promises of additional donations, do not click on any links within the email.
Also, do not reply to an instant message or chat if you suspect that the message or sender might be inauthentic.
Here are some tips on how to discern a fraudulent email from a legitimate one:
- The Email address: Legitimate emails from our team will end in "@gofundme.com". If you’re ever unsure, you can always contact our team directly. Fraudsters like to create emails that look similar to the real ones, such as "help@gofunmecharity.com" or "support@GoFunddMe.com." Do not reply to these emails.
- Any included links: Links to almost all GoFundMe Charity campaigns begin with https://www.charity.gofundme.com/. Similar to the methods used for creating fraudulent email addresses, some phishers will create URLs that look similar, so be sure to read them carefully before clicking on them.
If you accidentally click something that doesn’t look quite right, don’t worry, simply close out that tab in your browser right away.
- Strange Tone or Requests: Fraudsters will often use a tone suggesting immediate action needs to be taken. This creates a sense of urgency which can fluster the reader into not thinking clearly about what’s being asked of them.
When our team sends you something that requires action on your part, we will still never ask you for your passwords or banking details, so if you receive an urgent message asking for either of these, do not respond.
Last, but not least, you can always report emails or websites that you think might be fraudulent to our team so that we can investigate. Do this by forwarding the email and any attachments to abuse@gofundme.com or nposupport@gofundme.com, or contact our team.