Twitter wants you to stop pontificating about the election for 30 seconds and put your money where your tweets are.
The social network announced Tuesday that it is partnering with Square, the payments service, to allow U.S. users to make quick political donations to the ever-growing field of 2016 presidential candidates just by clicking on a tweet.
"This is the fastest, easiest way to make an online donation, and the most effective way for campaigns to execute tailored digital fundraising, in real time," Jenna Golden, head of political advertising sales, wrote in a blog post announcing the feature.
The political donation feature comes at a time when Twitter is increasingly trying to encourage users to make transactions within the social network. On Monday, Twitter unveiled a better shopping experience within tweets thanks to a partnership with Stripe, another payment processing startup.
Twitter won't be taking a cut from these political donations, according to a spokesperson, but it does help condition users to make payments through the site and perhaps involve itself in a major, long-term news event. Square will take a 1.9% cut per donation from candidates.
Multiple candidates, including Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Scott Walker and John Kasich, have already jumped on the Twitter donation bandwagon. Others like Rand Paul have expressed an interest in doing so.
Hillary has been fighting for women and families her entire life. If you're with her, chip in today: http://t.co/KX61ZTxsM2— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 15, 2015
We have the momentum. Let's keep it going! Contribute to our campaign today: http://t.co/LCtn5ZDFNu— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 15, 2015
Just launched our @SquareCash account. Show Scott Walker some support going into the second debate by donating $2. http://t.co/wqU3twctQM— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) September 15, 2015
Twitter has a smaller audience than some rival social networks like Facebook, with 304 million monthly active users compared to Facebook's recent milestone of one billion active users in one (particularly good) day. Twitter's audience is particularly engaged with news and current events, potentially making it a good fit for more political features. In the past, Twitter has also developed custom notifications that reminder users to register to vote. (Facebook has also encouraged users to vote and accepts charitable donations, but has stopped short of political involvement.)
The real winner of this feature may not be Twitter or any of the candidates, but rather Jack Dorsey.