
Dwolla Developers - Ataub24
http://developers.dwolla.com/
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swang
FYI to Dwolla people. The developers page shows a scary red, "This is probably
not the site you are looking for!" when I click on it.

<https://developers.dwolla.com/>

"You attempted to reach developers.dwolla.com, but instead you actually
reached a server identifying itself as *.heroku.com. This may be caused by a
misconfiguration on the server or by something more serious. An attacker on
your network could be trying to get you to visit a fake (and potentially
harmful) version of developers.dwolla.com. You should not proceed, especially
if you have never seen this warning before for this site."

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Ataub24
Fixing it... thanks for the heads up.

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untog
I want to love Dwolla, but while it requires people to add money to a balance
I just can't see it fitting into a natural flow of purchasing. I see, I click
buy, I go to checkout, I checkout... oh wait, not enough money in my account,
OK, I'll top it up with some cash... OK, cash added, now I can go back to my
original checkout page...

I don't know what the answer is- clearly they want to avoid making a bank
transfer for every purchase (which is understandable) but the user experience
just seems kind of lacking to me. Last time I checked they did have an
automatic option, but it cost users $3 a month. Eh.

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wahsd
How is you not checking your balance before a purchase in any way different
than making sure you have enough money available through your current payment
method?

Sounds like you really should be making a point that Dwolla needs to build
confidence and adoption. If Dwolla could become or partner with a net bank
that has FDIC deposit insurance, I would think that would seriously blow up
their adoption rate. I haven't given it a good look recently, but that would
make me feel more comfortable with using it; especially if they also partnered
with a behemoth like Amazon or Google for payments. They need to make a
marketing push as a way to screw Visa, MasterCard, Banks, etc and it's ability
to push down prices through lower processing fees.

~~~
untog
_How is you not checking your balance before a purchase in any way different
than making sure you have enough money available through your current payment
method?_

Well, my credit card doesn't require topping up, it requires paying off every
month. And my bank account/debit card gets a direct deposit of my wages- I
don't have to top it up.

If a lot of places used Dwolla it would make sense to stick $1,000 in my
account. But as it is right now, I would be leaving a lot of money in an
account I barely use.

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shtylman
If you are a merchant, please read this before thinking about using Dwolla (or
any service for that matter). Feel free to contact me about what I wrote and
my personal experiences with it.

<http://www.shtylman.com/archives/319>

This is not meant to be trolling; I genuinely want people to be aware of what
they are getting into and understand the risks so they can avoid the problems
I (and others) have already faced.

~~~
prplhaz4
Thanks for the post. I'm very interested in hearing more real world experience
with Dwolla, as there doesn't seem to be much out there. Presumably, the
things it would be most useful for (larger transfers - where credit card fees
are high, or p2p) are the most risky.

I will say, however, that the API is simple to use, and having a built in
mechanism for charging a facilitator fee is great - but convincing my
customers and merchants to use it will be difficult if fraud continues to be a
sore spot.

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vwadhwani
I wanted to love these guys, I really did. I had a b2b operation all set up
and just needed some help with the payments. After going through their API I
realized I could technically do everything I needed.

But they insisted that each customer have their own account which didn't make
sense in my circumstances. I couldn't even get them to return emails or have a
phone call to discuss.

Pro tip to startups out there: it never hurts to talk to potential customers..
they may be your next pivot.

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Ataub24
Yo! I run partnerships at Dwolla. Your email from May went to my spam- I just
responded. No excuse, but sorry about that.

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shtylman
Until I see how they are dealing with fraud instead of just shafting their
merchants I won't touch anything Dwolla no matter how pretty they think their
api is.

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Ataub24
Dwolla puts a lot of attention towards fraud. Have you seen any of the recent
changes on the site, articles about how Dwolla combats fraud now? If you want
to have a real conversation about it- feel free to email me at
Alext@dwolla.com.

~~~
larrys
"articles about how Dwolla combats fraud now?"

Links? Nothing obvious I am seeing even with a search for "how Dwolla combats
fraud"

Additionally is there any difference (for a merchant) in how Dwolla handles
chargebacks vs. a credit card company?

~~~
shtylman
No, Dwolla WILL take your money if they are hit with chargebacks. Do NOT use
them if you value your payments.

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nanodeath
If any Dwolla folks are looking, this page seems to have massive character
encoding problems when viewed with the Android Browser (Android 2.3).
It's...rather interesting.

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FellowTraveler
I used to have good feelings about Dwolla.

Until they dumped Bitcoin.

Now I have bad feelings.

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Ataub24
I may be bias but the konami code is pretty awesome :) Unicorns and Fireworks

