So I tried Dwolla last week to pay somebody back for some concert tickets and it was not a good experience. I, naively I suppose, thought that maybe Dwolla had come up with some clever new workflow for on-boarding people you wanted to send money to. Alas, I got a few angry texts from the person complaining about having had to input their social security and bank account numbers and, after feeling uncomfortable about having done that, not knowing how to cancel their account. The transaction did eventually go through after I convinced them to be patient, but it's not a rousing endorsement of the platform.<p>I echo some of the other concerns in this thread that there just may not be an easy way to transfer money to people given all the security concerns. I still far and away would prefer to have my bank send a physical check to somebody I owe money too because at least that doesn't require them divulge sensitive information to an entity they don't know.
Hopefully they can use some of that money to safeguard my information since they refuse to delete it from off there servers. Or alternatively they could use that money to issue their federally mandated privacy statements that they refuse to do.
As a developer, the biggest concern I have with Dwolla is the initial friction for new users, e.g. entering their bank account number. I would like to see the complete end user signup flow featured more prominently. I didn't see anything on the topic while signing up for a developer account.<p>Criticism aside, I'm definitely rooting for Dwolla. I don't think they need to match the comparative ease offered with credit card purchases, but they need to be in the same ball park.
Nicely done. I really love the mission, driving the payments market to be being brutally efficient. Some nasty brutes[1] on the other side of the fence but they can be contained.<p>[1] Various established payment processors who would have you believe that if you aren't related by marriage to the CEOs of the big banks on Wall Street you will be killed.
How is Dwolla better than bitcoin? It seems like it has the same drawbacks of credit cards (chargebacks), without very much benefit.<p>Maybe I'm missing a killer feature, but Dwolla doesn't seem all that interesting, just another paypal competitor.
<i>Mission: Allow anyone [or anything] connected to the internet to move money quickly, safely & at the lowest cost possible.</i><p>Fantastic mission statement: clear, concise and it sounds almost impossible to do.<p>Although they didn't like my take on it when I was at a certain unmentionable payments company, it was my intuition several months ago that a price war is <i>inevitable</i> in this space. Whatever company initiates it will be the one that gains enough momentum from the tail to scale efficiencies best. Namely: any and all efficiencies that are "left over" after price for fellow companies in the space to compete on (great support, a beautiful API, etc.) Dwolla's aggression here shows that they understand the future of money transfer.
Ending the 3% tax on transactions (which ends up being what, 5-10x on the year, due to multiple transactions with the same dollar?) would be a huge boost to the economy.