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.
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...).
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.
Dwolla possibly (probably?) does more Bitcoin business than coinbase does, and that has probably been true since before coinbase existed.
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.
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.
Is something like this not possible in the US?
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.