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Recognising and managing potentially unauthorised donations

When a GoFundMe fundraiser gets support and has been shared with potential donors across the globe, amazing things happen. With that opportunity, there is also a chance that some donors may donate without the permission of the cardholder. Some of the risks in accepting unauthorised transactions are that you might experience unexpected refunds and chargebacks.

Our Payment Review team is working around the clock to prevent the unauthorised use of cards on GoFundMe. However, cards can still be compromised and used at any merchant across the web, including GoFundMe fundraisers.

When this happens, our team takes action to defend the GoFundMe community by returning the donation to the cardholder. There are some signs that you can watch out for to help protect yourself from any donors who are using cards without the cardholder's authorisation.

To protect your fundraiser, look out for:

  • Donor names that don’t make sense as the name of a person or organisation
  • A large number of donations from a single individual or under the same name without explanation
  • A donor you don’t know personally asking you to provide a refund through another form of payment outside GoFundMe

If you are seeing any of these happen on the fundraiser, contact our team by clicking "Get help" and we can refund or review those donations with you and address any questions that you have about this.

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