PETALING JAYA, Aug 19 — Most of us have at some point experienced or heard of scams involving illegal organisations which lure people into donating to bogus charity organisations.

Now, a group of university students has taken it upon themselves to put an end to these charity scams by creating a free smartphone verification system called “scan2verify,” which allows donors to verify the legitimacy of a particular organisation.

One of them, Loh Chooi Shawn, 20, said: “These scams are getting out of hand and are depriving legitimate organisations of the funds that they need.”

Loh, along with her five teammates, is a participant of the Youth Leadership Programme, a 12-week project-based leadership development programme designed for university students and run by a global management consulting firm.

According to her, the programme divides the participants into 10 teams, each of which is required to carry out a social entrepreneurship project.

The “scan2verify” system consists of a QR code which will be published on an organisation’s official website. When scanned using any mobile QR scanner application, it will lead to the project’s website which details all relevant information on the organisation.

“Since we make sure that we only collaborate with legitimately-registered charity organisations, scam sites, or better known as phishing sites, which do not carry our ‘Scan2verify’ QR code can be easily identified,” Loh said.

Five weeks into the project, the team has already managed to get well-established organisations such as Make-A-Wish Malaysia, Yayasan Chow Kit, Animal Care and Pertiwi Soup Kitchen on board.

“Our team leader, Eric Tan, is in charge of the computer programming and software, while the rest of us handle the publicity and approaching various organisations,” Loh said.

For organisations which send volunteers to collect donations from the public, each collector hired by the organisation will receive an individual QR code, which leads donors to a web page displaying his or her photo and details.

“Most charity organisations have been very supportive of our project. We hope to collaborate with many more in the weeks to come,” she said.

Organisations which are interested to incorporate the unique charity verification system in their donation drives and fund-raising events can email the team at scan2verify@gmail.com.