How to donate to Nepal's PM Disaster Relief Fund without getting scammed

My father-in-law forwarded me four different QR codes on Thursday morning, each one asking for flood relief money, each one slightly different: one had "Disaster" misspelled, one had a personal name attached to the account, one was a screenshot of a screenshot. He wanted to know which was real before he sent anything.

None of them were verifiably real. That is the actual problem this week, not a shortage of people willing to give.

What happened on the Trishuli

On the morning of 26 August 2026, a section of the Langtang Lirung glacier near the Nepal-Tibet border sheared off and came down as a debris flow into the Trishuli river. USGS recorded a magnitude-5.2 seismic signal from the collapse itself, not from a tectonic earthquake. The flood tore through Rasuwa and Nuwakot districts and reached as far as Dhading, Gorkha, Tanahun, Nawalparasi, and Chitwan.

The numbers are still moving, so treat anything below as a snapshot rather than a final count. As of 29-30 August, Nepal's side reported 734 dead, about 2,498 missing, and 1,473 injured, with China's side of the border adding a further 16 dead and 546 missing. UN OCHA described it as an event of "immense impact" with casualties still mounting at the time of that statement. NDRRMA had over 18,700 rescuers deployed by 29 August, and IFRC's early estimate put roughly 93,000 people impacted overall. The Council of Ministers declared the affected area a disaster zone for three months. Whatever figure you see by the time you read this, it will almost certainly be higher than what's printed here.

That scale of search-and-rescue effort, with people still missing days later, is also why the fund's use isn't limited to immediate food and shelter. Reconstruction of homes, roads, and river-crossing infrastructure along the Trishuli corridor will run for years, which is the same reason Section 12B names both the Disaster Relief Fund and a separate Reconstruction Fund rather than just one.

The one official channel, and why "one door" matters

Nepal already has a standing disaster fund for exactly this kind of event: the Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund (also referred to as the Prime Minister's Natural Disaster Relief Fund), administered by the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers. The Ministry of Home Affairs published an official appeal for donations on 11 Bhadra 2083, roughly 26-27 August.

Alongside that appeal, the government announced a "one-door" policy: every flood-relief donation, cash or in-kind, is meant to run through this single fund rather than through whichever committee, ward office, or Facebook page happens to be collecting that week. Three physical hubs were designated for in-kind donations such as food, blankets, and medicine. The logic is straightforward. Scattered collection points are exactly what let fake ones hide among the real ones.

Separately from public donations, the government had already released Rs 6.75 crore directly to flood-hit local governments in the affected districts for immediate relief work, according to Radio Nepal's public broadcast reporting on 29 August. That money moves through the state budget, not through donor contributions, so it isn't something you need to track or claim credit for. It's worth knowing about only because it tells you the PM Fund is meant to top up what local governments can't cover on their own, not replace it.

How much should you actually give

There's no fixed answer, but there's a wrong one: donating an amount that leaves you without a cushion if your own month goes sideways. If you don't already have a working emergency fund, a disaster appeal is not the moment to empty your savings account to prove you care. Give what you can from money that isn't already earmarked for rent, EMI, or your own buffer, and treat a recurring smaller contribution as more sustainable than a one-time amount you'll regret by the time your next bill is due. Relief and reconstruction after an event this size will take months, not days, and the fund will still be accepting donations well after the news cycle has moved on.

How to actually send money

The official portal is pmdrf.nchl.com.np, titled "Prime Minister Disaster Relief Fund – Government of Nepal" on the page itself. That link drops you straight onto the donation form, card tab already selected, there's no separate marketing homepage to click through first. I opened it and checked its source directly rather than trusting a screenshot: the card checkout runs through NCHL's own GetPay gateway (the same company that operates ConnectIPS), which is a real, working payment integration and not a static phishing page. The portal offers exactly three donation modes, each shown as its own tab on that same page:

Open the link above and pick the tab yourself. When you land on the NEPALPAY QR tab, the portal displays two QR images side by side, one routed through Laxmi Sunrise Bank ("LSL Relief Fund") and one through Himalayan Bank ("HBL Relief Fund"). That is the actual QR the fund provides, not a code copied off a forwarded message. Scan it from the live page rather than from any screenshot someone sends you, screenshots are exactly what get re-edited into fakes.

Notice what the portal does not show anywhere: a bank account number for a manual transfer. Its own large-donation note simply says to use a SWIFT transfer through your bank if your card won't process the amount, without printing an account or SWIFT code on the page. Several account numbers are circulating on blogs and social media right now claiming to belong to the fund. I could not independently confirm any of them against this portal or a government source, and given that Nepal Police is actively warning about fake accounts using this fund's name, an unverified number in a blog post does more harm than good. For a SWIFT transfer, use the portal's own contact link (a Cloudflare-protected email address, visible when you open the page) rather than a number from any other source, including this one. The portal also states donations are non-refundable, so double-check the amount and currency before you confirm.

The tax deduction that makes this different from ordinary giving

Most charitable donations in Nepal fall under Section 12 of the Income Tax Act 2058: you can deduct what you give to an approved tax-exempt organization, but only up to whichever is lower, Rs 1,00,000 or 5 percent of your adjusted taxable income for the year.

The Prime Minister's Disaster Relief Fund gets its own rule. Section 12B allows a full deduction of any amount contributed to the fund or to the government's Reconstruction Fund, with no percentage limit and no rupee ceiling.

If you donate Rs 50,000 and you're in the 20 percent tax bracket, that's roughly Rs 10,000 off your tax bill, on top of whatever you already gave. Keep the portal's payment confirmation or your bank transaction slip. You'll want it if IRD asks for evidence when you file your return online, the same way you would for any other deduction you're claiming.

This is also one of the few places where giving more actually helps your own tax position instead of just capping out. A Section 12 donation to, say, a school or a hospital trust stops reducing your tax bill the moment you cross the Rs 1,00,000 or 5 percent line. A Section 12B donation to the PM Fund keeps reducing it for every additional rupee.

The scams already running

Nepal Police issued a public warning on 27 August 2026, three days after the disaster, listing what they were already seeing:

• Fake QR codes copying the fund's official branding
• Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Viber pages running unofficial "राहत कोष" or "सहयोग अभियान" collection campaigns
• Requests to deposit "on behalf of" the fund into someone's personal bank account
• Phishing calls asking for your banking credentials under the guise of processing a donation
• Fake "I'm safe, but send money" messages impersonating relatives of flood victims

The rule that cuts through all five: never donate to a personal account, never act on a QR code or bank number you received secondhand, and verify only through the official portal or a verified PMO social media account before you send anything.

The same verification habit applies whether it's a QR code, a wallet ID, or a call asking for your PIN. If you want the fuller playbook on spotting a scan-and-pay scam, Fonepay's own merchant-side scams follow an almost identical pattern to what's circulating for flood relief right now.

If you already sent money to an account you're now unsure about, treat it exactly like any other bank fraud: call your bank immediately and ask them to flag or attempt to reverse the transfer, then file a complaint with Cyber Bureau. The first-hour freeze-and-report steps for phishing apply here too, since the faster you act, the more likely the receiving bank can still hold the funds.

One more thing worth knowing if you're the one being asked to help, not just to give: if someone offers to pay you for receiving relief donations in your personal account and forwarding them along, that arrangement has a name and a criminal penalty attached. Renting out your bank account makes you the one holding legal liability, not the person who recruited you, disaster relief or not.

If you'd rather not go through government channels

That's a reasonable position, and there are legitimate alternatives. The Nepal Red Cross Society, founded in 1963 and Nepal's largest humanitarian organization, has been active since the flood hit, reaching roughly 5,000 people with emergency supplies within the first few days. You can donate directly at donation.nrcs.org. IFRC has already released about CHF 1 million in emergency funding to support that response, which gives NRCS's work a layer of international oversight on top of its own.

Kathmandu Post's own coverage names the PM Fund, NRCS, and IFRC as the three channels worth using, with an explicit warning that fake fundraising spikes hardest in the first 48 to 72 hours after any disaster. We're past that window now, but the fake accounts don't stop circulating just because the news cycle moves on.

For scale, and why a fund like this exists at all: the 2015 Gorkha earthquake killed 8,773 people, injured 23,304, damaged or destroyed over 785,000 homes, and displaced roughly 2.8 million, at an estimated economic cost of around USD 7 billion, close to a third of that year's GDP. Nepal's disaster funds get rebuilt and re-tested against events like this roughly once a decade.

What you actually need to know

Donate through pmdrf.nchl.com.np if you want the government channel, or donation.nrcs.org if you'd rather go through the Red Cross. Don't trust any bank account number or QR code that reached you through a forward, no matter who sent it. And if you do give to the PM Fund, the Section 12B deduction has no cap, so keep your receipt.

Questions about tracking a donation in your own budget, or anything else in this guide? Email parjanya57@gmail.com.

This post is part of the Nepal Money Basics guide — the Protect what you've saved section.