Stripe Joins Presidential Race by Shaking Up Campaign Contributions

It may be unthinkable to some out there, but the next Presidential election is a little over a year out.

That’s got plenty of political names—and even some that weren’t so political—looking closely at the future and mapping out a plan of attack.

But these plans won’t be cheap, so many are likewise looking toward campaign contributions to help push a candidate to victory. Stripe is throwing its own hat in the ring, reportedly behind the donations systems of several potential future candidates.

Word from Fortune is that Stripe is currently driving the donations systems for Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, Marco Rubio and Scott Walker, as well as both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee. That’s a whole lot of potential donations—‘according to top fundraisers and bundlers,’ $5 billion total—and as it turns out, Stripe managed to land the donations thanks to a certain outlook that worked equally well regardless of what side of the political aisle the candidates to be were on.

Patrick Collision explained it simply enough: Presidential campaigns were like a startup, starting from nothing, and needing to make the most of every moment.

A bad month for a political campaign could cost the whole thing, and that meant that there needed to be an easy way for the customers—here donors—to hand over cash quickly and readily.

Campaigns needed a fantastic infrastructure, and quickly, because for all of the possible candidates, there would no longer be a campaign by, at the latest, mid-November 2016. That’s where Stripe could step in, offering a mature platform that was easy to use and ready to go, and the speed of development was what really mattered in the long run.

Indeed, it makes sense. By the time the next Presidential campaign comes around, starting around mid-2019, who knows what we’ll be looking at in terms of payment systems?

Maybe most of our commerce will be routed through smartphones. Maybe it will be a wearable device that takes over. Maybe we’ll transfer cash by thought.

But for right now, campaigns need quick ways to receive donations, that work well with online platforms and things like quick response (QR) codes and the like on mobile. That calls for an easily integrated payments system, and payments platforms like Stripe can supply that kind of infrastructure.