Dwolla Grid is here. Cash just got more secure than plastic.
dwolla.org
dwolla.org
Neither of which I believe.
The Members Group is a financial services company (serving roughly 2 million members) and is one of our main investors and security partners. Working together with them, we've been able to provide Grid's distribution for free.
But you do bring up a good point to clarify. While the Grid is free, using our rails is not. In our online and mobile platforms, we charge a flat fee of 25 cents, no matter the size of the transaction. So, when a third party does build on top of our network, we still hold onto that quarter. This is our only fee.
Sorry for misleading you. I'll change the verbiage.
I'm pretty sure your assumptions about what it means to have The Members Group as an investor need to be double-checked. I believe you're still going to need licenses to operate in most states.
Aaron
For example, if you do a $15k transaction, do you have reporting requirements?
With dwolla being the people who hold your actual cash that you use their system to trade around with.
Just a guess though.
Grid is an Oauth API that allows third party access to our payment network, Dwolla.
In case you're not familiar with Dwolla, we're a cash-based network that is devoid of credit cards (this is how we operate so cheaply). We allow our users to send money through their social networks, buy goods at local stores based on their location (called spots: http://www.dwolla.org/blog/dwolla-spots-the-future-of-paymen...), all for a flat fee of 25 cents.
Grid provides developers access to all of this to build new technologies we haven't even thought of.
Does this help, at all?
also, is it only for the US?
To answer your question, we do work with the ACH system to load a Dwolla account, and yes, we work strictly in the US as of now.
Steps to do so:
1.) open account at https://www.dwolla.com/register.aspx NOTE: AFTER THIS, YOUR ACCOUNT CAN NOW RECEIVE DWOLLA PAYMENTS. Cool, huh? Feel free to follow @dwollaX on twitter to get a few bucks free and demo our social integration p2p feature.
2.) Verify your bank: security is obviously a top concern of ours, so we will make two small deposits into your bank account, which you will verify (this will take 2-3 business days). This is a one-time occurrence.
3.) Initiate a load to your Dwolla balance: This will take 2-3 business.
We're working with new banking products to make this process speed up exponentially, but so far, we've seen tremendous growth with Dwolla Spots and our flat 25 cent fee. Checkout our map: dwolla.com/spots.
1.) Low-cost, flat fee of 25 cents 2.) Social integration (with Facebook and Twitter) for p2p transfers 3.) Location-based payments (see Dwolla Spots) 4.) FiSync, our financial services product(see TechCrunch coverage here: http://techcrunch.com/2011/03/25/dwollas-fisync-lets-you-ins... 5.) And now Grid (which theoretically could allow us to be a loading mechanism for PayPal)
I feel like your PR is ahead of your product.
But I couldn't see anything I could use today, as a consumer, merchant or developer, so it didn't feel like it was here.
And I couldn't really understand why it was so great, even if it was here... so it didn't feel world-changing.
I've seen a lot of companies do this, where they pump up things that are still in the pipeline for one reason or another, and the net result is that visitors like me feel like we wasted our time by giving you our attention.
-http://www.siliconprairienews.com/2011/06/dwolla-releases-gr... -http://thenextweb.com/apps/2011/06/07/dwollas-grid-api-could...
Honestly, we severely underestimated the demand and intrigue Grid would garner among certain tech circles (we mainly built this to assist in our financial services product, called FiSync).
We understand you all have questions, many of them as a result of encountering something "new." We'd be happy to help clarify any questions you might have.
Also, feel free to check our recent coverage (http://www.dwolla.org/help/dwolla-in-the-news/). Hopefully, combined with this information, we'll be able to better communicate what Grid is.
Zaarly is requesting permission for the following: "Allows money to be pulled out [by Zaarly] and sent to your contacts."
Seriously?
I want to opt-in for each purchase. I want only one-time use transactions, I refuse to grant some third party the ability to suck money from my account. That's why I'll never use ACH or a debit card for subscription-based services. This sounds like that is exactly what I'ld be doing?
How else do you think you get stuck with recurring magazine charges for Highlights Magazine... Or is that just me? Anyway, when we do it you have total and utter control over the access third parties have.
Another way to look at it: What if Visa allowed you to see everyone that has had access to your billing information to revoke or change it as you pleased? We thought that'd be huge, especially because you, the consumer, aren't exposing personal information. Also, because 3rd parties aren't allowed to access or store your credentials, they don't have the liability of protecting it.
It's still permission oriented, like swiping, but centralized for independent control.
Go here to see what it will look like to manage those "permissions": http://www.dwolla.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Grid-c...
To clarify, I kept the update (the thing I think you're quoting)at the bottom, but changed some of the verbiage in the post to better reflect this.
if it quacks like a duck, that it must be a.. paypal?
or how are you guys different from paypal, again?
something about third party developers....how are you going to atract 3rd-parties if I as a consumer after reading post and comments still do not understand what your service does, and what are the benefits...apart from privacy - this stuff is just plain pointless in this day and age....