Dan Bongino announced the launch of a new payment platform, AlignPay, to combat cancel culture and big tech tyranny and ensure businesses are never denied financial access over their political beliefs.
The launch was announced earlier today on the Dan Bongino Show podcast (relevant part starts at 36:00) .
After former President Donald Trump was kicked off payment processing platform Stripe in January for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, Bongino went to work creating an alternative for organizations that have and express opinions that make them vulnerable to disapproval by Big Tech companies.
“It’s focused on the cancel culture. So Stripe is our target here. You need to come to us, or you’re under the very real threat of being canceled,” Bongino told the Washington Examiner.
“Anyone who’s going to engage in any of this cancel culture totalitarianism, we’re going to expose and offer our services to the people you cancel,” he said.
AlignPay is set to compete with the likes of Stripe, Square, and PayPal in the transaction business, and will offer its services at a similar price to its main competitors. The service is set to specialize in credit, debit, and bank-to-bank transactions, with fully encrypted transactions and the promise not to sell personally identifiable information.
Bongino stressed that the platform is open to all political beliefs, noting that the platform will not discriminate against liberal groups:
Bongino said that organizations with all backgrounds and political beliefs would be welcome to use the platform, including ones aligned with conservatives, such as anti-abortion groups and pro-gun rights organizations, but also liberal groups such as the Black Lives Matter organization or ‘Defund the Police’ groups. The only groups that will not be allowed on the platform are those involved in “any criminality,” said Bongino.
The service was created and funded by Bongino, along with Jeff Wernick, Eric Berger, and Jake Hoffman. Bongino said the service is “more than a business” to the group, arguing that people and businesses have been scared of speaking out for fear of being cut off from financial resources:
“It’s more than a business to us. It’s a movement. Many people are afraid of speaking out against the tech platforms because they control their ability to earn an income,” Wernick told the Washington Examiner.
AlignPay’s target, Stripe, which handles card payments for millions of online businesses and organizations, chose to kick Trump’s campaign website and online fundraising operations off its platform in January for violating its policies against encouraging violence, through his role in the Jan. 6th Capitol attack.
Bongino noted that conservatives have become frequent targets of technology companies for publicly voicing their beliefs, which means conservatives should be able to take their business elsewhere:
“They just don’t want conservatives’ business. Well, that’s fine. Conservatives don’t want them either,” Bongino said.
Trump hasn’t endorsed or committed to using AlignPay yet but is aware of its existence, Bongino said.
“So I want to give everyone an alternative. I don’t want this to happen to anyone, Trump or anyone else again. When you cut off someone’s financial lifeline, you cut off their entire website,” he added.
The move follows Bongino’s entry into the social media world, where he purchased an ownership stake in the free-speech platform Parler last year. Similar to AlignPay, Bongino wanted to build a place for conservatives who were frequently being silenced by well-known social media giants such as Facebook and Twitter.
“I’ve decided it’s time to fight back against the Tech Tyrants,” Bongino said at the time. “I’m beyond fed up with the censorship and bias of Twitter and Facebook and I’m not going to stand back and watch as they target us. As a result, I’ve taken an ownership stake in Parler, the hottest social media alternative in the market right now.”
