[moonboots]

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.

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.

[Ataub24]

It's coming! I work on partnerships at Dwolla and full account creation as well as getting money into the account quicker are big initiatives for us. Hit me up at [e-mail] if you want to chat more.

[javert]

What would be great would be if you could fund and de-fund your Dwolla account using Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is either going to be important, or it isn't.

If it is going to be important, somebody is going to make it easy to transfer money between Bitcoin and USD, and they're going to be hugely rewarded.

Dwolla is _extremely_ well-positioned to do this in the sense that it already is an established company that has banking connections and is in a good spot regulation-wise.

The only company competing in this space right now is coinbase, but I think the part of the problem Dwolla has already solved is harder than the actual bitcoin part of the problem.

So this is Dwolla's opportunity to lose, pretty much.

Disclaimer: This is probably laughable to any company insiders because there is no way you all haven't already thought through this kind of thing (and probably found good reasons to reject it...).

[jerfelix]

with coinbase, I transferred maybe $600 to Bitcoin. With Dwolla, I transferred maybe $60,000. That should be an indication of the potential.

The reason is that with Dwolla / Mt Gox, I could control my purchase much better. I love ooinbase: they are a GREAT consumer service. But for large sums, I think Dwolla could have a huge win.

[javert]

Yeah. Similar story here.

Dwolla possibly (probably?) does more Bitcoin business than coinbase does, and that has probably been true since before coinbase existed.

[hisabness]

why can't you all delete dkhenry's account information from your system?

[pc86]

I've considered using it to have clients pay me because the only other options are to give away 3% to CC processors, or wait a week+ for a check to come in the mail.

If there was a way for me to pass new client onto a single sign-up process (whether I built it via an API or whether it was on Dwolla's page and tracked via referrer), that would go a long way to convincing some of them to use it.

[cookiecaper]

I tried this last summer. It was fairly disastrous. It usually takes 2 weeks to get paid via Dwolla, and if a banking holiday is involved it may take even longer. I had support issues that were not resolved promptly, or in some cases, not at all. If you make a mistake in the UI, your 2 week wait can grow even longer; they've since corrected some of the phrasing, but it used to be unclear if you were putting money into Dwolla or taking it out. If you accidentally put it in when you meant to take it out, you're looking at ANOTHER 2 week wait to get your money, and hopefully the account you ordered a withdrawal on has enough room for that transaction not to overdraft. They won't and supposedly can't reverse that kind of operation.

As a developer, I attempted multiple times to get information on the FiSync APIs, as I have connections to some local financial institutions. I was thoroughly ignored despite some significant persistence.

Like all banking startups, Dwolla is just a frontend for a real bank and they can't control flow or do anything once a "real bank" operation has been handed off. Dwolla therefore sucks. It'd be nice if they used that money to become a bonafide, real banking institution.

My clients and I went back to check via parcel carrier. It was still usually at least a week faster than Dwolla.

[brandall10]

Just an FYI, if by clients you mean for consulting work, Freshbooks has an arrangement w/ Paypal (yeah, I know) where payments are a flat $.50 (yes, 50 cents) for all invoices up to $10,000. You will still have to put up with a wait to get that money in your bank account (3-4 business days if payment is immediate), but it can all be handled online. I've had all my payments over the past year go thru Freshbooks and the lifecycle of invoices/payments is tracked in their system.

[toomuchtodo]

Thank you for this contribution. My business uses Freshbooks, and I was unaware of this.

[Ataub24]

you can use guest checkout for this. Right now its only in the offsite gateway, but eventually we will add it to others- check it out here: http://developers.dwolla.com/dev/pages/gateway/guest

[robryan]

In Australia we can login to Internet banking and send money to another account with any bank in Australia free of charge and usually within 2 business days.

Is something like this not possible in the US?

[maxerickson]

The user experience for person to person transfers varies and is usually poor.

Electronic transfers (ACH) only take a couple of days though, and for things like payroll, once the accounts are set up it all works fine. They also work pretty well for making payments to businesses and what not.