Dwolla: Leave your bad experiences with credit cards at the door.

As a merchant, you are well aware of the hassle of the typical payment rigamarole. The time, the paper work, and, let’s not forget, the money. Before you get acquainted with Dwolla, we ask that you throw all of those assumptions out the window. 

• To have a Dwolla account is free.

• Transactions under $10 are free.

• Transactions over $10 are a flat $0.25.

• There are no setup fees, no maintenance costs, no annual fees and no hidden charges.

• We have free tools for you to use in your retail location.

• We have ways to plug us in your online shopping carts.

• Go viral with your customers’ social networks.

• Reporting and tracking is free.
   

Simple, right?
 

What is Dwolla?
 

Dwolla is a new type of payment network that works with financial institutions to offer a cheaper, safer, and overall better payment experience. We give merchants a way to accept cash electronically through the Dwolla network. Dwolla is not a bank or a credit card processor; we are the network that allows you to accept real cash from paying clients.
 

How to setup?
 

We purposely made the initial registration process as easy as possible. No hurdles to jump through with merchant account representatives, no long credit checks, or exhaustive assessments, just a simple and FREE registration process.

What will you need to setup?
 

• General information about your business: Be sure to use the address associated with your businesses location, this will create your Spot on our map (see below)

• A valid EIN or tax ID number from the IRS

• SS# or Scanned ID of account administrator 

After filling out and verifying the required information, you will be able to log into your Dwolla account and instantly start taking Dwolla payments.
 
Yes, it really is that simple.
 

What To Do With Your Dwolla Account (the basics)
 

1. Add a Bank Account: Under “Add Bank Account” in your Dwolla account, you will have the option of adding your U.S. checking or savings account. Once initiated, we’ll deposit two small amounts into your linked financial institution account that we’ll then ask you to verify inside of Dwolla. Please note these two small deposits may take up to 2-3 business days to post to your bank/credit union account. Once synced, you’ll be able to deposit or withdraw funds into your Dwolla account.  Each of these processes (depositing and withdrawing into and out of your Dwolla account) can take two to three business days, but Dwolla to Dwolla transfers are instantaneous.

2. Upload an Avatar: Don’t want a shadowy grey profile to represent you in the Dwolla world? Upload an avatar. An avatar is just a picture or logo that will show up when you transact with a customer. To upload your avatar, go to “Settings” and then “Change Avatar.”

3. Connect to Twitter: Businesses can connect their Twitter accounts to Dwolla to add more value to purchases, which customers can decide to share publicly. Note: If your company has multiple locations, please know that only one Dwolla account can have only one Twitter handle profile connected. 
    

How to take Dwolla
 

Before we go further, it’s important to remember that when taking Dwolla, you should treat it much like cash, not credit. Ok, now that we have that cleared up, let’s chat about our retail and online options.
 

Retail

How can customers send me money?
As a Dwolla merchant, you are able to receive money based on your Dwolla ID number, email address, and a special set of location-based tools available through our consumer-facing mobile application, called Proxi and Spots.
 

• About Spots: Your Spot is attached to the address you have attached to your account. Users opening Spots can explore nearby Dwolla-accepting locations on a map. This feature can be turned off in your online dashboard in “Add/Remove Settings.” Check out our blog and video for more information.

• About Proxi: When a consumer turns on Proxi inside their Dwolla application, they’re able to see a listing of nearby merchants and other Proxi-enabled devices. So if you own a food cart, truck, or are a vendor at a farmer’s market, you can turn on Proxi to allow users to easily find and pay you. Check out our blog and video for more information.
   

Free tools for real-time verification at physical locations
In order to monitor those real-time transactions coming in from a customer, all your business needs is a device that connects to the Internet.
 

• The Dwolla Kiosk: The Kiosk is an easy way to stream incoming Dwolla transactions from your web browser. Simply head over to https://www.dwolla.com/kiosk/ to get started. You cannot send money from this screen as it was designed to simply show incoming transactions.  

• The “Dwolla Merchant” app on Apple devices: This app allows you and your employees to stream incoming transactions from Dwolla customers. You cannot send money from the merchant app as it was designed to be used by your team to simply show incoming transaction.
   

Note: Remember, we’re a network, not a POS provider :)   If you think you’d like to create a better a solution, head over to our developer section and go build it!

Can I plug Dwolla into my existing point-of-sale?

Dwolla is actively working on deeply integrated point-of-sale integrations.  Please send us your suggestions on who we should integrate with: support@dwolla.com

Although you cannot currently verify payments directly inside your point-of-sale software, you can leverage your POS’ ability to add new tender to the system while using the Dwolla Kiosk or Dwolla Merchant App to verify incoming transactions. On most modern systems, this is as easy as adding a gift card to the tender screen and can be done in as little as five to ten minutes. Just label the button Dwolla, give it cash-like properties, and you’re ready to go.
 

Online

Shopping cart solutions

If you are interested in integrating Dwolla with your online store, please check out the current shopping cart options we offer. Oh, and be sure to take a look at our 2-click checkout feature, the Offsite Payment Gateway, and other cool tools while you are there.
 
We are always open to integrating with other shopping cart solutions and love hearing suggestions.  Please make us and other developers aware of your suggestions in our developer forums: http://getsatisfaction.com/dwolla.

HUB Page

HUB page is a great feature that anyone can enable, for free! It provides your account its own link, which you can send to people or post inside your website, that will allow people to easily fill out and pay you.

Find out more about enabling the HUB page, and even how to customize your page to have prefilled fields.

Additional Features and Helpful Tools
 

Auto Withdrawal
Auto Withdrawal is another feature that anyone can enable. This feature allows you to set up your account so that any funds that come into your account from another person will automatically begin the process of withdrawing back to your bank account that you have linked. To enable it, simply go to "Add/Remove Features" inside of your Dwolla account and change to "Enable" next to the Auto Withdrawal option.

Statements
Statements are exactly what they sound like, a record of the transactions that are occurring on your Dwolla account. Statements can be viewed by logging into your Dwolla account and clicking on the “Statements” tab, and can be exported to Microsoft Excel to keep for your own records.