Maybe an alternative to Paypal?

[steve817]

Saw this company profiled on CNN recently https://www.dwolla.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

It appears that they operate kind of like Paypal with the two biggest differences being.

1. They don't allow you to use credit cards
2. Their fees for receiving money are only 25 cents for any amount over $10.00

Has anyone on here tried them yet?

[Thomas]

Send me $1,000 via them and I'll give you a thorough evaluation :)

I only need $500 to thoroughly evaluate the service.

Never heard of it though.

[Diesel42]

Maybe I'm missing something. I won't use a service that doesn't allow credit card payments. First, I don't want to give anyone access to my bank account. Second, If there is a dispute on the transaction, my credit card company carries more weight with venders than my bank. Just my two cents, Nick

[steve817]

Maybe I'm missing something. I won't use a service that doesn't allow credit card payments. First, I don't want to give anyone access to my bank account. Second, If there is a dispute on the transaction, my credit card company carries more weight with venders than my bank. Just my two cents, Nick

If you sell a lot of stuff like I did at one time. The potential savings could be huge. You have a good point on disputes though. Their whole point in keeping credit cards out of it is to avoid the fees than inevitably go with them. AndyC when you get ready to sell me one of your toys, we will talk.

[gregthehand]

The problem I see is that I have a hard enough time just getting someone to use PayPal. Generally the older the person the harder it is for them to use it. With some customers I've actually had to walk them step by step through the PayPal process. That's the big reason I just got a tax ID and started taking credit cards. Much easier.

[The Annoyed Man]

I haven't tried DWOLLA yet, but I did get a SQUARE for myself and one for my wife. I recently taught a basic handgun class at a private range located in a cow pasture west of Cabelas in Fort Worth. (Anyone who has taken a class from Crossfire and her husband in the last couple of years would know which one I'm talking about.) One of the students paid me with a check, the other paid me using my SQUARE. It definitely cost me more than 25¢ for the transaction, but on the other hand, she was able to use her credit card, which DWOLLA doesn't permit, and the money was deposited into my Bank of the West bank acount that day......while standing in a cow pasture. It even recorded her signature for the transaction. And, there is no monthly fee and no other additional fees. Just the straight 2.75% that SQUARE charges for all transactions. And I always have the option of telling the customer, "it's $100 if you pay by check or cash, and $102.83 if you pay by credit card," which will ensure that it is always $100 which gets deposited.

I will say this.... I've been accepting credit card payments for about three years now. All of my hosting clients are billed automatically each month and the money is automatically deposited to my business account. Since I don't process a lot of transactions (only about 25 or 30 a month), I don't get nearly as good of a rate as some others get, and my current merchant processor charges me 2.35% plus a 15¢ per transaction fee........as well as the monthly service charge of $15.00. Now, I know that some would say I am getting screwed, and if I were processing hundreds or thousands of transactions a month, that would be true. But for small volume businesses such as my own, you're never going to get the good guy rates, and so this is just a cost of doing business for me. It is the price of getting paid on time, and not having to take time out of my day to drive to the bank and deposit money.....especially since all those charges don't occur on the same day of the month. I am told that the NRA offers a better merchant processing rate than that and I still have to check into that.

At least Paypal will offer the alternative of paying with a credit card rather than through a Paypal account. Not everybody has a Paypal account, and not everybody wants to set one up just so that they can process a single transaction. For my website customers who want shopping cart systems on their site, using the Paypal API makes it easy, and my customers don't have to go through the additional costs of getting an SSL certificate and maintaining HTTPS security. They let Paypal manage that part of things.

I can see why DWOLLA doesn't want to do things that way. Anyone who has followed the demise of GunPal—which, character issues aside, was partly due to their frequently getting dropped by various banks making credit card processing impossible. They finally burned out when the difficulties led to some shady financial practices and frauds in an attempt to stay alive. Paypal is an already established and well funded institution. It isn't perfect, and it is true that they will not process a firearms transaction.......at least not knowingly. I have purchased 2 or 3 firearms using my Paypal card by splitting the transaction between that card and my regular Visa ATM card. Thus, Paypal only knows the vendor, but not the product sold. All three of those transactions occured at the (no longer there) Sportsmans Warehouse in Lewisville. The truth is that Paypal is far from the only banking system that is unfriendly to firearms. Chase Bank is another. I decided a long time ago to simply accept it and move on. And for most of my clients, who are not particularly involved in the gun world, Paypal's stance on guns is irrelevant.

But, the problem with DWOLLA's business model, as far as I can see is that, because they won't process a card, they are not that convenient for someone who isn't interested in setting up a DWOLLA account on the spur of the moment just so they can pay somebody. Their model depends on a LOT of people signing up for it before it becomes a viable alternative for online businesses.

Anyway, those are just my perceptions, and I've been wrong plenty of times before.

[RoyGBiv]

Maybe I'm missing something. I won't use a service that doesn't allow credit card payments. First, I don't want to give anyone access to my bank account. Second, If there is a dispute on the transaction, my credit card company carries more weight with venders than my bank. Just my two cents, Nick

If you sell a lot of stuff like I did at one time. The potential savings could be huge. You have a good point on disputes though. Their whole point in keeping credit cards out of it is to avoid the fees than inevitably go with them. AndyC when you get ready to sell me one of your toys, we will talk.

Credit cards (NOT debit) are a buffer between a criminal and my money.
Eventually, DWOLLA will be hacked or scammed and there will be no buffer to prevent money draining directly out of your bank account. Your bank will view it as an authorized transaction and will disavow any liability. Your only protection is the quality of DWOLLA's security and your personal actions to secure your DWOLLA account and activity.

When I use PayPal, or a credit card, my liability is limited to the cost of the transaction, I am protected from fraud and I have stronger recourse should the item I purchase be damaged, lost or misrepresented by the seller.

Until someone can step in with a truly better way, including credit-card-level fraud/crime protection, the credit card/paypal cost is, IMHO, worth the 3%. On paypal specifically, I'm not paying sales tax... so.. I'm saving 8.25% to start.

[steve817]

AndyC when you get ready to sell me one of your toys, we will talk.

I don't have any toys - I lost them in this dreadful boating accident, see, and ....

[brenda03]

Many are animated with the more convenient, safer and better options delivered by Dwolla for online transactions. And more and more site use the advantage of dwolla over PayPal to promote their sites. There are those who became disappointed by PayPal as an online payments choice ever since it was purchased by eBay. Many have felt the sting of lost funds, account freezes and other service nightmares that some may say rest just this side of downright fraud. Then there are the fees. For those who desire alternatives, there's Dwolla, an online payments site that claims it does a better job than the competition, for less money.Article source: Dwolla set to challenge PayPal for online payments