Alexa Will Be Able To Make Verbal Contributions To Presidential Candidates

Amazon has announced on Wednesday that Alexa users can make political contribution of $15-$200 to the participating presidential candidate of 2020, starting from October onwards. To use the feature of Alexa Political Contribution, the users must enable voice purchasing in Alexa settings and also must have a default and valid payment method in the Amazon accounts.

The company said that donation could be made for each registered campaign for each cycle of elections. Only those presidential campaigns which have kept accounts for accepting donations through the Amazon pay can receive contributions. Amazon has invited all the candidates to use this feature and said that on-boarding was very simple and that it did not require technical experience.

The street address, phone number, bank account and credit card information should be provided by the campaign and all should be US based. Amazon said that a valid website stating a privacy policy is required by the campaigns and also they should have filed the Federal Election Commission Forms 1 and 2. If all the qualifications are met, they can make their registration for Amazon pay and start accepting donations. The company said that the companies can start signing up for participating in the Alexa Political Contributions from Thursday.

Kerry Hall, Amazon spokeswoman has told that the campaigns will be charged with a processing fee of 2.9% along with the 30 cents for every donation. The restrictions for using Alexa for making contributions is that user should be at least the age of 18 years and a citizen of US or has a lawfully admitted permanent residence. The user must use own name and own personal payment means for making contributions. Hall said that there is an option of setting up a verification code before confirming the contribution.

Hall said that the donor information will not be made public but the details of the donor like name, email address and physical address will be provided to the campaigns. Amazon said that their aim was to provide accurate, timely and relevant information about candidates and elections and as such Alexa does not have any opinions on candidates or politics of her own.

About: Akash Gokhe