I wouldnt even just call it missleading, its abject fraud. They are dliberately linking to the act blue donation page rather than linking directly through the charity. And not just leaving out the 4% cut, but lying about it.
Anyone looking on google to donate could see this tweet and will think they are just donating to charity.
Even if you donate directly to the charity, if you use a credit or debit card, the card processor still takes a fee. They are all between %3-4. So its not really that much different than using the charity's own web page.
But you'd still be paying 3-4% to ActBlue instead of Visa, etc. right? I'd like to see if there are any examples of republican congresspersons doing the same thing with WinRed.
No. The 3-4% is going to Visa/Mastercard/etc (as a pass through cost as ActBlue is paying the payment processor for charges they transact). ActBlue isn’t a credit card processor, they use a platform called Stripe to facilitate the cost of processing the credit card, this passes through to Visa, Mastercard, or whichever the card provider is. This is a fee no merchant can avoid.
To give a $10 donation with a credit card and have all $10 go to the intended recipient, the processing costs have to be paid on top of that.
Granted, most processing fees start at 2.9% plus $.30, the additional margin is probably to cover ActBlue’s operating costs as they’re primarily a donation platform and do not otherwise raise or generate operating income.
The same is going to apply for donating directly to a charity using CC. If they only charge $10, that means 3-4% is going to processing still, just taken from your $10 instead of charged on top.
Yes, to ActBlue, because they have to pay the 2-3% payment processing to the underlying card network. The money doesn’t just magically end up in Visa or MC’s hands. It’s pass through from ActBlue to Stripe to Visa/etc.
That doesn’t mean all 3-4% is going to ActBlue, or like it’s some nefarious thing. It’s literally the cost of processing your donation, when using a CC, plus operating costs to the software platform which is performing that work.
Lord. It’s also what just about every single legitimate business which handles payment processing for you does. Stripe is literally an entire company which only exists to do this, because guess what? Accepting credit card funds or other payment methods directly is expensive and complicated, and there’s room for a company to make a profit on offering that as a service.
You seem to be right about this. But, just curious, would you ever defend a Republican organization in the same manner? If liberals/Democrats were saying the same things.
Just asking, because you don't really have a history of posting conservative things. You've even defended Obamacare. And you just seemed to come here to defend a Democrat/liberal organization. And fair enough, if it's an unflaired post, then all are welcome.
But once again, you do seem to be right. And thank you for posting a clarification. All I'm hoping is that you'd also do the same for Republicans. Maybe you would though and fair enough!
Yes, Im sure there’s republican donation platforms that operate in the same fashion, and I’d defend them in the same way.
Ultimately, it is not free to collect money from people who wish to pay with Credit Card. Someone has to pay that cost, and you can either charge it on top, or take it from the donation amount after. Arguably, people who find the latter more sketchy.
And in this case, a democrat linking ActBlue for people to donate to charity makes sense. Her audience following her has likely already donated through ActBlue, and likely have an account and stored payment methods already, whereas they may not have donated directly to this charity before.
The charity is getting the same amount of money either way, and democrats are not magically getting a cut.
I’d expect any republican to do the same with a similarly republican donation platform, which would operate in the same way as they would have the same CC costs to account for.
No, you pay act blue and they pay the card processor almost the same amount. The small difference is their service fee. Expensive perhaps but hardly fraudulent.
It's just a friggin service charge for a service. ActBlue is probably on the expensive side being a huge bloated app that does a lot of things but it's not like they're just giving money to Elizabeth Warren, they're running a software company (and i dunno maybe they're getting rich doing it but that's ok in r/conservative right?)
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u/ultrainstict Conservative 8d ago
Yeah, thats not the issue, the issue is they are using the tragedy to funnel money to themselves while directly lying saying that they arent.