Dem Donation Platform Moves Toward Mobile Wallet Payments
NGP VAN Payments users will be able to make campaign contributions using their digital wallets after the Democratic tech giant rolled out the latest update to its donation processing platform.
The rollout – dubbed Optimized Checkout – comes as NGP VAN looks to bolster its nascent donation processing service, which launched last year as a direct competitor to ActBlue, the Democratic fundraising behemoth facing scrutiny by the Trump administration.
The update contains new payment forms that automatically detect and surface users’ most likely payment methods, including Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal and Venmo – a feature that NGP VAN said will ease the donation experience and increase conversion rates for campaigns that use the payment system.
“These new forms are a leap forward in digital fundraising,” NGP VAN’s General Manager Chelsea Peterson Thompson said in a statement. “By combining Stripe’s cutting-edge capabilities with NGP VAN’s deep campaign expertise, we’re making it easier than ever for Democrats and progressives to launch high-performing fundraising programs.”
The new features are built directly into NGP VAN’s suite of digital tools, the company said, meaning that campaigns won’t have to manually export or sync the information required for compliance reporting.
Other Upgrades
NGP VAN has unveiled a suite of new features in recent weeks. Late last month, the company’s popular online organizing and fundraising tool ActionKit launched new features that support NGP VAN Payments.
In an interview last week, ActionKit’s Director of Product Karin Roland told C&E that there will be a steady stream of new features coming to ActionKit and NGP VAN Payments in the coming months, including one-click donations via Stripe Link, the payment processing tech widely used by online retailers.
“Some of this you’ll see in the coming weeks, some of this you’ll see in months,” Roland said. “On each individual thing, there’s a different timeline, a different amount of development work that goes into it.”
While NGP VAN has said that the product updates have been in the works for a while, the new features are being rolled out in the shadow of a federal investigation into ActBlue. President Donald Trump signed a memorandum last month directing the Justice Department to look into the Democratic fundraising giant’s security and anti-fraud practices.
Democrats have widely cast the Trump administration’s efforts as an attempt to use the power of the presidency to target the fundraising infrastructure of his political opponents. ActBlue, for its part, has denied any wrongdoing and pledged to “pursue all legal avenues to protect and defend itself against the Administration’s baseless claims.”
Still, some Democratic fundraisers have said that, although they still intend to use ActBlue, they need to have contingency plans in place ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
