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Comment by jslampe | Hacker News Reader

Happy to help.

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?

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No, no worries. Not a dumb question, especially considering how we phrased it on the blog. I think we got used to people being really familiar with our product, so launching right into a big blog release like that (which is our style) threw a lot of new people off.

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.

So is this kind of like Paypal but with a carried balance?

kinda - without massive percentage based fees + mobile and social payments

So where does Cash become involved?

While we do have carried balances, which is stored by our other investors (non-interest baring), The Veridian Group, we do differ from PayPal on several fronts (disclaimer: PR messaging, sorry).

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)

thanks for answering, i'm excited for your product and would like to try it if you guys get a canada release.

hey jslampe, thanks for answering - if Dwolla is cash based, how do I put money in my account? Do I mail you a check? Sorry if my question sounds silly but it's genuine confusion on my part. If the service is cash based, how is money transferred? how can cash in an account be taken out?

also, is it only for the US?

It doesn't clarify anything for me, really.

I feel like your PR is ahead of your product.

Hmm, sorry. Could you e-mail us with some more specifics? Give me or a new voice another chance to answer?

I feel like I read a product announcement that claimed this thing is here, and world-changing.

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.

what is confusing?

Yes, actually. Thanks for explaining!

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