Our donor protections already meet or exceed what new legislation will do. Here's the record.
In 2024, Representative Steil proposed the SHIELD Act, which aimed to strengthen donor verification standards for political committees. While the legislation was not taken up by the Senate, ActBlue implemented many of its key provisions anyway – adding to our already robust security and verification policies. As the leading fundraising platform, we are continuously improving our services, strengthening security and optimizing our offerings to better protect donors and serve the tens of thousands of campaigns and mission-aligned causes we serve. This is just part of how we operate.
With this new legislation: The CVV requirement? We enforced it years ago. Prohibiting contributions via gift cards? Done, along with non-reloadable prepaid cards. Requiring document verification for donors without U.S. mailing addresses? We stopped accepting all contributions from U.S. citizens abroad, even though those donations are perfectly legal.
This week, as the midterms approach, Rep. Bryan Steil introduced the Campaign Finance Transparency Act, which he's calling "comprehensive reforms." The announcement was framed as a necessity based on his partisan investigation into ActBlue.
Let’s be clear: That framing is intentionally misleading. ActBlue already enforces key provisions of the bill today.
Our preparedness and proactivity is not a coincidence. We have always led industry reform ahead of legislation, and ahead of biased political moments. This bill is no different.
Meanwhile, WinRed has refused to even disclose how they vet donations from overseas and fought to make small-dollar donations less transparent (a key tenet of the legislation).
We are the only fundraising platform, regardless of party, ready before Day 1.
Take a look.
| What Rep. Steil Proposed | What ActBlue Already Does |
| Requires CVV/CVC* number and billing ZIP code for card donations | Requires CVV verification and uses AVS (Address Verification Service) to check billing ZIP codes on card donations |
| Prohibits contributions via gift cards | Blocks gift card and non-reloadable prepaid card donations |
| Requires document verification for donors without U.S. mailing addresses | Blocks contributions with a foreign mailing address, foreign IP address, OR foreign BIN (Banking Information Number), including U.S. Citizens living abroad who are legally allowed to contribute |
| Prohibits straw donation schemes | Prevents straw donation schemes by using a sophisticated external fraud prevention tool that evaluates characteristics such as: card type, issuer country, and recent address changes |
| Requires the name on a card to match the name of the donor | Requires the name on a card to match the name of the donor on transactions |
| Removes the de minimis reporting threshold | Reports virtually all financial data |
*Card Verification Value (CVV) is the 3 or 4-digit security code on your physical card. It is one of many ways companies can verify that you have the card in your possession during an online transaction.
ActBlue also holds PCI DSS Level 1 certification, the highest standard of payment security available, and we manually review all contributions flagged by our fraud detection tools.
These protections predate Rep. Steil's partisan investigation and the political controversy he has tried to manufacture around them.
If the goal is election security, standards should apply equally
If Rep. Steil's concern is truly about protecting elections, one would expect the same scrutiny to apply to WinRed. An Associated Press investigation in 2025 found that Trump's own campaign listed citizenship as "verified" for just two of more than 200 donors living abroad, many of whom contributed through WinRed.
As a for-profit organization, WinRed is not subject to the same reporting requirements that would compel it to disclose how it vets donations. It also does not have a stated policy concerning how it prevents foreign donors from making illegal campaign contributions, and has not responded to media requests asking for further information. This leaves its donors, regulators, journalists and the public with little basis to evaluate whether its practices comply with the law.
Republicans should consider strengthening security standards on their own campaigns, instead of targeting ActBlue for their own political gain.
Democracy is not a game. We didn’t build these protections because Congress told us to. We built them because our donors deserve them, and because the integrity of the political process depends on it.
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ActBlue is a safe and secure fundraising platform that enables millions of Americans to participate at a grassroots level in the most fundamental pillar of our society: elections. It’s our priority to ensure that donors’ contributions and personal information are protected. ActBlue does not sell donor data or information. Ever.
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