Conservative talk-show host and former secret service agent Dan Bongino announced the launch of a “censor-resistant” payment processing system, Parallel Economy. Bongino is partnering with Jeffery Wernick, an angel investor and bitcoin enthusiast, to put together the product offering.
Parallel Economy is designed to challenge popular business-use payment processors like PayPal and Stripe. Both legacy platforms banned conservatives in the wake of January 6th. The platform censors went so far as to ban the sitting president of the United States, Donald Trump, from processing payments on campaign websites.
Businesses that choose to opt-in to Bongino’s payment ecosystem will pay between 1.49% and 2.98% per card transaction and a .15 cent fee per transaction. Stripe charges 2.9% per card + .30 cent fee per transaction.
Parallel Economy was formerly announced as AlignPay, but changed its name in recent months.
The video platform Rumble announced in early January 2022 they would take a stake in the payment processor. Rumble CEO Chris Pavolski said, “”Our mission is to eliminate every chokepoint and backdoor to cancel companies like Rumble and our creators,”
“This investment in a digital payment processing system is another example of Rumble’s commitment to put creators first. With Parallel Economy, creators won’t have to worry about arbitrary cancellation. Giving creators financial security is a critical part of Rumble’s mission to protect a free and open Internet.”
It’s unclear at the moment if Parallel Economy is dependent on other mainstream tech infrastructure like hosting servers. Famously, the Bongino-backed social media app Parler was removed from Amazon AWS servers, virtually shutting down the platform for over a year… and destroying the gains it had made in the alternative social media space.
Conservatives and free speech-minded individuals have been looking into alternative social media platforms, eCommerce and payment infrastructure solutions in recent years.
Social media platform GAB was banned in 2018 and 2019 from the Apple App store, Google Play Store, and Amazon AWS servers. GAB was forced to build their own in-house server system in order to be operational.
In 2021, the Canadian Freedom Convoy had their crowdsourced financing shut down and confiscated from GoFundMe. During this time, even classical liberal thinker Jordan Peterson was advised in secret by a member of the Canadian military to take his money out of the Canadian banking system.
Photo credits: Daily Caller.
