How Dwolla May Just May Be The Meteor That Makes Other Payment Methods Extinct For Many Business Transactions , Plus All Of Those High Fees Too!
This is an interview that I just did with Dwolla, which as far as I am concerned is a Credit Card killer. It might also take a big bite out of PayPal as well. If you do any business or transactions online or need to help support relatives by sending them money (kids, lazy in-laws etc 🙂 ) this is the way to go!
Why? Try no fee for sales under $10 and… Just have to listen or read the interview to find out more.
Oh, and of course, it is in my highly scripted and under control interview style that you all know! 🙂
All kidding aside, check this out. We are building apps for it right now and if you need help implementing it, please contact us. I LOVE this service!!! OK, here we go.
Name of audio: Dwolla Interview 1
Length of audio: 12 minutes and 07 seconds
Easy Anderson interviews Jordan Lampe from Dwolla.com
Easy: Hi there. Andrew EZ Anderson here and I’m about to interview Jordan Lampe from Dwolla which happens to be a credit card processor. Well, actually, it’s quite a bit more than that. I’m going to let Jordan tell you a story but keep your eye on this company. It’s Dwolla.com and we are using them for all of my businesses that I’m involved with and I’m pushing them for my customers’ businesses, too, because they’re going to revolutionize how people pay for things in the U.S. and maybe worldwide here shortly. And if you want to save a whole lot of money and a lot of hassles on processing any form of payment for pretty much anything that you have to do with business or personal life, then you should listen to this interview because I’m sure you’ll get a lot out of it. I know I did. And umm so,anyway, we’ll talk to you soon and listen to this. You’ll be glad you did.
Jordan @ Dwolla: My name is Jordan Lampe. I’m one of the builders over here at Dwolla and kind of specialize in communication and I help the team – get the word out about all the cool crazy things, freaky stuff that we’re doing.
Easy: Okay. And then, Jordan, how long have you been with Dwolla?
Jordan @ Dwolla: I have been with Dwolla now a little bit over a year.
Easy: Okay.
Jordan @ Dwolla: It’s been a wild ride.
Easy: So, and then how long ago did they start?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Dwolla conceptually was born in around 2008 after our founder Ben Milne kind of set up with some of the credit fees with this other company called Elemental Design and that custom speaker manufacturer.
Easy: Okay.
Jordan @ Dwolla: And he had – from there, he had turned out and $1200 – investment into about, I think, like a multi-million-dollar company that he was paying all of these outrageous fees. Everyone is like $55,000 in credit fees and you know, it’s felt like tons of money coming out of his pocket and such and he started working in 2008. In 2012, it went national. National.
Easy: Okay. And before you get ahead of selves here, and this is – I’ll take responsibility for this. What is Dwolla?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Oh, yeah. Dwolla is kind of a – it’s a new payment network. It’s a way to send and receive with literally with non the costs and we are associated with credit cards and other traditional networks. So, with Dwolla, transactions are only 25ï¿ , over $10. If the transaction is under $10, it’s free.
Easy: Gotcha. And so, unlike – you know, I don’t – I mean that the big players after all, obviously, PayPal and Google payments and they charge quite a bit more than that. I think, the transaction fee is about 25 or 35ï¿ . I just looked at my bill. I got about had cow because the – with 200 – almost $200 to get in $2500 or something like that …
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah.
Easy: … it was hmm. Maybe, it was more than that. Almost $10,000 but it was an awful a lot of money. I’m like, “Wow. I could have had one heck of a nice dinner for that.” So …
Jordan @ Dwolla: Exactly. And you’re like – the 100,000 other merchants out there that are paying $50,000.000,000/ (50 Billion dollars) per year in its fees.
Easy: Right. And I went through it. I’m a – just before disclosure, I’m a customer and a merchant with you, guys, and the reason for this phone call is want to kind of try and help get you – get the word out to, not only for my customers but other people so that we can start using this more and more because it’s just insane that you know if you are selling that’s under 10 bucks, it doesn’t cost you anything to the transaction. That’s huge. I mean, that really exactly.
Jordan @ Dwolla: And that …
Easy: … like you said …
Jordan @ Dwolla: Exactly.
Easy: … that is money directly in my pocket. So …
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. Thank you so much. I mean, that’s it. You nailed that on the head. I think, one of things Dwolla has never invested in advertising. We’re really, really lean on marketing. Really, we don’t do anymore kidding and stuff like that. Our growth has been fueld solely by people who have been disenchanted with the costs and how they’ve been treated and all these other things involved with money traditional moves. So, that’s cool. We appreciate it. That’s awesome. Thank you.
Easy: Oh, you’re welcome. You’re welcome. And so, is everybody that works here called a builder? Just out of curiosity.
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. Yeah. You know, right now, it makes sense. We all come in the office which – I like to think of that. If your title is a verb or based on a verb, it’s more like that you’re going to be doing something else there. So, yeah.
Easy: Yeah. Okay. I love it. I love it. So, now, we brought that up so do people work in the office or they work out their homes? How is that distributed, though?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. We have 20 employees. Two of them work from the Kansas City Region from the campus here in the region but the bulk of them just only comes in office and works.
Easy: Okay. Okay. Cool. And let’s just go through this because it’s so simple. We don’t need to make any more complicated than it is. So, it’s free to sign up, is that correct?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Absolutely.
Easy: Okay. And I want you to process. It takes maybe two or three minutes and then you have some identification procedures that you’d go through and I think that took about a day for me get back. I had to provide some information that made sure that the company was really et cetera et cetera. Is that about right?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yup. Yeah.
Easy: Okay. And then after that, if I want to sell something or send – as long as it is under $10, I don’t pay anything?
Jordan @ Dwolla: No.
Easy: It just goes in my account and then I transfer that money to my bank account, correct?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. Yeah.
Easy: Okay. And then, let’s see, what else do you have? I know you have subscription modules which are great so, if I have people that pay me every month a certain fee, I can set that up, is that correct?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. Yeah. We have Recurring Billing.
Easy: Recurrent Billing. Yes. That’s a correct term.
Jordan @ Dwolla: Technical term. Yeah.
Easy: And then, what about sending money back and forth? I guess so, if I wanted to send $100 because we can do the multiplier on that, how much does it cost me and the other party? If I want to send $100 to Joe for working on my website, how much would – what’s involved in the transaction?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Really nothing more than what you’ve already kind of elaborated on. I’ve send $100 to you, you’re going to receive $99.75.
Easy: Okay. And then, so, I paid 25ï¿ and you pay 25ï¿ ?
Jordan @ Dwolla: No. Just the receiver at this point, but we’ve also worked in the feature that allows you to kind of absorb that cost.
Easy: Right.
Jordan @ Dwolla: So, if I’m paying – if I’m giving a tithing of, yeah, $100 might charge.
Easy: Yeah.
Jordan @ Dwolla: We feel a lot of people donating absorbing the 25ï¿ cost.
Easy: Okay. Wow. Yeah. I’d say what, though, if it makes a difference, you have bigger problems than 25ï¿ .
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. Yeah.
Easy: Okay. So, the website is www.dwolla.com, is that correct?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yes, it is.
Easy: All right, Jordan. Anything else you want to tell me? I mean, I don’t want to complicate this interview. I think it’s a great service. It only works for the U.S. currently, is that correct?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yes, that is true. Right now, that’s not really something to be a technical issue as it is kind of, you know, cutting through the red tape of entering other nations. I mean …
Easy: Oh, I’m sure. Yeah.
Jordan @ Dwolla: And …
Easy: This is – go ahead.
Jordan @ Dwolla: No. I was just kind of say we want to make sure that as we continue to expand and grow, that, you know, we’re bringing that same level of innovation that we prospered it to the U.S. so, we’re definitely involved in a lot of discussions on how to do that.
Easy: Uh-hmm.
Jordan @ Dwolla: But right now we are focused on the US, that is correct.
Easy: Okay. Well, I mean, that’s huge. That’s a huge market here and this basically cuts off the other people at the knees which is great. I mean, that gets – it gets rid of the middle man. I see this much like, you know, what Amazon did for a lot of things and also perhaps with the, you know, the stock trading that used to cost $35 or $40 to do a transaction so, you couldn’t do small amounts and it just would kill you. Now, it’s, you know, 5 or 6 or 7 bucks and you, guys, have done this for basically and virtually every retailer out there that wants to take advantage of it that sells anything online or services and it doesn’t matter what the money has been transferred for like you said, you just want to send me 100 bucks because I’m a great guy or you want to send money to the church.
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah.
Easy: It’s still the same amount, correct?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. And that’s really cool. What’s really a cool thing about Dwolla is because we are a payment network, I’m not an aggregator of the payment types like PayPal where you could pay with Visa and Mastercard.
Easy: Yeah.
Jordan @ Dwolla: It went how really wanted to too they could throw us in there as well. And so, we’ve also kind of built out. We really time your social payments, right? So, if we are Facebook friends.. I can actually send you money through Facebook and that can be really, really beneficial as well and of course, we still have all the mobile products. It allows you to send money with the same way that we talked about as well as how close I am to you even and it’s really, really a cool stuff that you can do with our network that you just can’t do it. With traditional ones.
Easy: Okay. So, I didn’t know about the Facebook thing. Explain that one to me.
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. Definitely. Dwolla, you know, we know that sending and receiving money is a very, very personal thing. Of the 98 percent of the time, we know the person.
Easy: Right.
Jordan @ Dwolla: So, if owe my brother money for a fantasy Football League, I shouldn’t have to type in some nine-digit code. I shouldn’t have to send an e-mail to allocate in 22. I just want to send it to my brother and Facebook allows us to do that and, of course, we also have that same kind of features that with Twitter and Linkedin as well. So, if we’re connected in our social network, then I can send you money.
Easy: Really? And do they – now, if your brother, does he have to sign up for Dwolla then?
Jordan @ Dwolla: No. And that’s what’s really cool.
Easy: Cool
Jordan @ Dwolla: But we have …
Easy: Cool. Cool. Cool. Sorry. That’s freaking cool.
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. No. It’s a lot of fun, right?
Easy: Yeah.
Jordan @ Dwolla: And so, when you use a service, you type in my brother’s name next to see my brother’s face pop up and so, and if it says you weren’t a member, by this time, I’m going to working here a year so if you will, that kind of Dwolla, it kind of be to phone in. But if you weren’t going to member, all I’d like to do is really shoot him the cash. Some will pop up on his Facebook so, they’ll say, “hey, once your register, connect your Facebook account and that money will just drop in to your Dwolla account.”
Easy: Wow. Okay. So, he does eventually have to register, though, right?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Yeah. Yeah.
Easy: Okay. Yeah. That’s what I thought. Okay. Well, that’s fantastic. But they don’t have to register before you send them the money?
Jordan @ Dwolla: No. No. I mean, that would just be kind of – so, and then I get – we really are dense on making this to network as big and powerful as possible and so, we really try hard on getting rid of the pain points or things that cause friction in adoption. Granted we are startup but we don’t build social networks. We don’t apply filters to photos. We are a financial service.. So, getting registered users isn’t necessarily as easy as getting maybe an article in a tech Blog or a Tech Crunch. You know, for us, we really have to build that trust.
Easy: Uh-hmm.
Jordan @ Dwolla: And that comes from social validation.
Easy: Great.
Jordan @ Dwolla: Through social networks and – are integration through them has been really powerful.
Easy: Gotcha. Okay. Anything else you want to add here? I want to keep this short and sweet. I want to get this up and hopefully, I will be able to get a thousand of users for you. I think that’s definitely possible.
Jordan @ Dwolla: That would be great. You know what? I think, we’ve been much hit everything. If you, guys, need anything, I’m at JS Lampe on Twitter and might you know, just Jordan@dwolla.com.
Easy: Oki doki. All right. I will get this transcribed and posted and send you a copy. I’m not going to edit anything. I don’t think we have to. Do you?
Jordan @ Dwolla: Oh, no, no, no. We’re good to go. I really appreciate your time.
Easy: Hey, thank you. I appreciate yours and you have a great day, Jordan.
Jordan @ Dwolla: You, too. See you.
Easy: Okay. Bye – bye.
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Got to www.Dwolla.com and sing up.
And nope, I do not get paid by Dwolla, it is just another GREAT company that I know can help put a lot of money in your pocket.
Seriously, it could make you thousands of dollars extra this year or once you get rolling, thousands in a month if you implement things correctly. Go Sign up for Dwolla now.
If you sign up below, I will send you my Special Report, “Dwolla, How To Add More Profit To Your Bottom Line In 24 Hours” that I am putting together for free. If you selling anything online, you can use Dwolla to put more money in your wallet quickly.
They really are the good guys and remember, you heard about it from Easy Anderson first.
In coming posts, I will show you how to integrate Dwolla easily with WordPress on the fly.
Have a profitable day!
Cheers,
Easy Anderson