Ashton Kutcher invests in Dwolla | Hacker News Reader

Ashton Kutcher invests in Dwolla

blogs.desmoinesregister.com

17 pointsAdamTReineke10 comments

I am still not sure how Dwolla works. Do I have to deposit money in my account to pay? Does it get the money from my bank account? How do they achieve low transaction fees? Why don't they explain this on their website? All it says is:

   New technologies are putting our lives, our communities,
   and our world at the tips of our fingers. At Dwolla, 
   we're using those same ideas to build a new payment 
   experience that's powered by you.

The above statement doesn't communicate anything other than it is a payment service. Well, there are a lot of payment services. What is unique about Dwolla?

It does get the money from your bank account. It's like a debit card service without a card.

As far as I know the difference between what they make on transactions and what credit card companies make is that they don't have a fraud management unit and they also just take in a lot less profit than the traditional cards do.

The FAQ seems to explain a little better (a little) http://help.dwolla.com/customer/portal/articles/87210-what-i...

As far as I know, they are using ACH's to get money in and out of the service (which has the disadvantage of taking a couple days, hence Dwolla Instant).

The low fees are simply their differentiation technique.

Has anyone used Dwolla for development? Free micropayments?

https://www.dwolla.com/developer

A solid investment :) I hope it comes to the EU soon grrr. Why are there literally 0 good payment gateways in the EU :|

I tell you, Dwolla is going to disrupt VISA/MC in serious ways.

How so?

The idea is that the reason that gas stations and convenience stores keep adding cash discounts is because they are getting fed up with how much money they are losing based on the widespread use of plastic instead of cash.

Dwolla charges a flat fee of 25c per transaction as opposed to credit which is like 2 or 3 percent. If you are at someplace expensive like REI or something and you buy $300 bucks worth of stuff with a credit card, REI gets a $9 bite taken out of it, which adds up when it's compounded thousands and thousands of times.

Low fees & convenience, I suppose.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com