Google Launches Political Contribution Service
Tech giant Google has extended it’s Google Checkout service to allow federal candidates to accept donations through the service. From the announcement, it seem’s like they try to compete with sites like ActBlue by allowing embedded donation forms.
More and more citizens are making political contributions online, and the newly launched Google Checkout for Political Contributions is an easy and fast way for candidates to collect contributions from supporters and build new online communities by enabling supporters to embed Checkout contribution buttons on their websites, blogs, and social network profiles. If you happen to be running for national office, there’s more information (and a quick process to get started) here. We hope this initiative helps bring regular citizens one step closer to the political process.
Of course, Google also takes 2% and a $.20 fee per transaction.
January 17th, 2008 at 8:50 am
Google is trying to compete with PayPal and sees another opportunity to “help the consumer”.
With Google’s trusted name, this is a win-win-win for the politicians, the contributors and (of course) Google.
Google will be here for a long time….
January 17th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
I don’t think Google will be able to seriously compete with PayPal until they start allowing person to person payments. As for donation’s, I’ll probably stick with ActBlue. With their service everything but the credit card fees go to the candidate. They make their money by asking for a small, separate donation with each transaction.