First, Dwolla simplified the B2B payment process. Instead of the nearly 3% transaction fee charged by some digital transaction services, Dwolla charges just one fee. Most transactions are 25 cents. (And transactions of less than $10 are free.)
Now the company says it’s trying to eliminate the barriers preventing your customers from being able to easily pay you this way.
Dwolla Direct is designed specifically to give customers an easy way to pay merchants, even if they’ve never used Dwolla before. So it might be an easy way to do anything from paying the landlord to paying for a health club membership.
Anne Driscoll, Vice President of Marketing, explains to Small Business Trends:
“We’ve made Dwolla Direct really simple by letting people make payments from your bank account without even needing a Dwolla account. What we’re actually doing is to give them the best of both worlds.”
The company claims the process is safer than writing a check. Since Dwolla can see both ends of the process, the company can alert you about problems ahead of time instead of waiting for that check to bounce, says Driscoll.
The company also claims it’s more secure. All that’s required is a pass code and an email. A customer’s personal financial information remains with their bank.
To use Dwolla Direct, Driscoll says you simply enter an email address and pick a password. You then read the Dwolla terms of service and select your bank from the list Dwolla provides.
So Dwolla Direct takes less time than signing up for a regular Dwolla account. For businesses, there may be more reason to take that time. They can use the platform regularly for simultaneous payments to large numbers of freelancers or employees. Dwolla can also make it less costly to make payments between suppliers, clients, consultants and partners.
Fees remain at 25 cents per transaction for payments over $10, says Driscoll. That’s even though customers haven’t signed up for a regular account and are making payments directly from their bank accounts. So these are benefits a business can use when encouraging customers to try the new payment option.
As the digital transaction space heats up there are more and more digital payment tools vying for attention. Dwolla is an example of a low cost service small business owners may want to keep their eyes on.
Images: Dwolla
[“source-ndtv”]
