Twitter and others are playing starring roles in the hoopla of the U.S. presidential campaign season — social media is where news breaks, candidates spar, would-be voters vent. Now Twitter is expanding its role by introducing a way for people to tweet political donations.
After the boatload of presidential hopefuls sign up for the service, they ll be able to tweet solicitations for donations. Thanks to a partnership between Twitter and payments startup Square, the candidates supporters can show their love — and show them the money — by clicking the contribute button that will be embedded in those tweets.
Among the candidates who have already signed up: Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, Bernie Sanders, Rick Santorum, Scott Walker and Rand Paul. The Wall Street Journal notes that Sanders and Paul (and Ben Carson, who has indicated he will use the service, too) have relied on small donations to help fund their campaigns.
Donors who use the service must provide their credit card numbers and other information required by the Federal Election Commission. Square verifies the payment information, and passes along the donation size, name, address, occupation and employer of each donor to the campaigns, company spokeswoman Katie Baynes told SiliconBeat. The campaigns keep track of the information required by the FEC.
For those interested in specific numbers, here s what Baynes said: The FEC requires that political campaigns report all donations over $200, collectively. For example, that means that if a donor contributes $50 once, then $160 later, they need to report both of those transactions so that they can be sure that any person contributing over $200 is accounted for.
Square charges campaigns its business rate of 1.9 percent, Baynes said.
In its announcement today, Square pointed out that it has been involved in processing political donations before. In 2012, President Obama and opponent Mitt Romney used a Square mobile app to collect donations.
Above: Screenshots from Twitter
