payin with dwolla

[chadwhitacre]

"Ultimately we're trying to build the next Visa, not the next PayPal."

Dwolla is similar to Stripe Platform (see #58) in that everyone would have to create an account on Dwolla and then money would go directly from person to person instead of through a central Gittip bank account. I like this a lot. I had to upload a photo of my drivers license in order to integrate with a bank account, and there appears to be a manual review process before my bank is linked, and it's unclear that my bank is even linkable (it says "We could not add your bank at this time. Please complete any additional verification requirements.").

Geez. I think this would even be free.

"Cost to receive money in amounts greater than $10: $0.25"

Is the Dwolla (photo ID!) hurdle higher than giving up credit card details?

I think we need to support multiple options, like Venmo does (see #38). If tipper and tippee have Dwolla then we use that, if not then do a credit card dance. Something like that.

Want to back this issue? Post a bounty on it! We accept bounties via Bountysource.

[timothyfcook]

Wow, Dwolla is great. I've done a LOT of research into new payment platforms recently. Everything we've been using is downright criminal, especially for small payment/mini-tips/micro-donations. It makes NO sense that using electronic payment methods is more expensive than paper ones. Setting up EFT transfers is very tricky and, while not as bad as CC, is still pricey. Handwritten checks, for whatever reason, are still free.

That said, something like GIttip could be an excellent way to encourage new payment systems to gain popularity. As you mentioned, it doesn't do much good if only a few people have Dwolla. This is really big though... I've been searching for something like Dwolla for a few months, guess I didn't look hard enough. I love this quote: "This is very exciting - real time banking transfers. Time for ACH (and 5 working days money transfers) to die"

Maybe you could partner intentionally with Dwolla somehow to get more traffic headed your way. A site like yours could be a great way for them to gain a lot of users. I would feel good about highlighting the Dwolla sign-up feature way more than the CC option... give them some serious advertising, for the sake of all of us.

[timothyfcook]

The rhetoric Dwolla uses is just like Gittip:

We think, in the long term, sending money should be as easy and effortless as finding a friend on Facebook. That's really a behavior we try to mimic when it comes to peer-to -eer payments. When someone does not have a Dwolla account, they get a wall post that says, "You've got money."

You can send people money without them signing up, but they can only receive it if they sign up and claim it... another synergy. Been reading about dwolla for the past half hour. I'm hooked.

[timothyfcook]

Just realized, essentially what Dwolla does is eliminate a 3% tax that we---somewhat ignorantly--pay on everything we purchase.

[ipmb]

Dwolla is U.S only

[chadwhitacre]

Word. Best way forward is multiple ways to move money in and out, methinks.

[timothyfcook]

Hopefully this new Balanced Payments works out. Are you hoping their "escrowing" capability will enable the holding of $$ until disbursement time (friday)?

The UI should be:

"You tip $1.32 per week." To back your tips:
1. Link your fancy new Dwolla account (and save on processing fees)
2. Or link your old timey credit card (and add the processing fees to your payment)

On Jun 25, 2012, at 2:43 PM, Chad Whitacre wrote:

Word. Best way forward is multiple ways to move money in and out, methinks.

---

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
https://github.com/whit537/www.gittip.com/issues/65#issuecomment-6556027

[chadwhitacre]

@ipmb Who isn't US only?

[ipmb]

Credit cards. I have no experience with them, but Paxum is out there as well. Only know about them from the TradeHill/Dwolla fiasco.

[chadwhitacre]

Right. Credit cards are working now for international payins (though this could be clearer; #57). Where we're currently stuck is international pay_outs_ (#126).

[treyhunner]

👍 from me.

Losing $0.30 plus 2.9% per deposits and $0.25 per withdrawal is a shame when the transaction amounts are so small.

[jfricker]

+1 for Dwolla. Seems like a natural fit.

Just saw this thread now. This is awesome. I'll get on it today and submit a pull request as soon as it's ready!

[chadwhitacre]

@Dwolla: Thanks for jumping in! :-)

I want to make sure we respect Balanced, since they have already joined the Gittip dev community and have been contributing integration with their service (#78) as well as visual design (#66). My ideal would be to use Balanced for white-label credit card and ACH transfers (where the user enters cc/bank account details directly on the Gittip site) and have Dwolla as a second option.

My understanding is that users will have to be taken off the Gittip site to the Dwolla site to set up an account if they don't already have one, yes? Can you also help me understand how payment flow will work with Dwolla? We need to batch gifts to preserve anonymity. We don't want to do transfers directly from one user to another.