Tweet Your Support for a Candidate—In More Ways than One

With a mere 14 months to go, the 2016 United States Presidential Election is starting to hit its stride. While the 140-character limit may not be the perfect discussion platform for complex political issues, candidates (and their supporters) are once again taking to the microblogging platform as they did in 2012. However, the upcoming race has a new way for people to support their preferred candidates: Donation via Tweet.

Twitter, which introduced its ‘Buy’ button just over a year ago to bring e-commerce to the platform, announced on September 15 its ‘political donations by tweet’ program.

Partnering with Square Cash, Twitter users in the United States can make a donation directly to a US candidate using said candidate’s $Cashtag (a term introduced by Square for its payment platform).

Touting the donation platform as “the fastest, easiest way to make an online donation, and the most effective way for campaigns to execute tailored digital fundraising, in real time, on the platform where Americans are already talking about the 2016 election and the issues they are passionate about,” Twitter hopes this move will continue to drive new users and engage its existing user base.

For candidates, sign up is easy, and is highlighted in the Twitter blog announcing the platform:

• Candidates can sign up for an account through Square Cash by visiting cash.me, selecting “Business” account, and then emailing campaigns@squareup.com to notify Square of their registration
• Once a campaign has been verified by Square, it can Tweet a unique URL, or $Cashtag, to request donations from supporters
• The Tweet will automatically include an image with a “contribute” button, making it easy for anyone to click to donate directly through the Tweet

For donors, it’s as easy as using Square Cash, a platform highlighted in our recent article on peer-to-peer social payments:

• When you see a Tweet containing a candidate’s $Cashtag and hit the “contribute” button, the Tweet will enable you to select a donation amount and add your debit card and FEC required information
• You’ll then have the option to Tweet the candidate’s $Cashtag to your followers or return to where you were in Twitter

As highlighted in an article on PYMNTS.com, This kind of grassroots approach may be just what campaign finance reform needs.

According to Open Secrets, although less than 0.23 percent of the U.S. population donates more than $200 at a time to political campaigns, those contributions aggregate to a total of 66.6 percent of all campaign pledges.

Though the feature just launched on the 15th of September, Twitter met with every major presidential candidate before its launch. So far, nine presidential candidates and the Democratic National Committee are on board. Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Rick Santorum, Bobby Jindal, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee and Marco Rubio have all already fired off tweets asking for donations. Notably, Jeb Bush and Donald Trump are yet to participate in the program, according to a TechCrunch article.

At 1.9% per transaction, this serves as a unique opportunity for Twitter and Square to generate money and for candidates to garner support in a new way, social payments.

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