Entering a growth stage with new partners - Dwolla. We’ve always shared the story before, and we have no plans to start hiding it now. Why? Whether you’ve been with us for a few weeks or the last few years, you’ve taken the time to get to know us, place trust in us, and advocate for us. You’ve made the conscious decision to accept us into a very sensitive and important aspect of your life, so it’s only fair that we do the same. I’m going to frame this conversation like a conference call with a ton of people I really care about, people who want to learn from our mistakes. I’m not going to get granular about numbers or if this means we all get to buy stupid stuff we don’t need. I’m also going to try to make it clear, insightful, and to the point; I don’t want to bounce around.
We’ve got new partners. I want you to know why we love them.I want you to know the truth about how it happened.I want you to know why I believe they will help us grow.I want you to learn how we did it (Spoiler: It’s because we hustled, not because we’re special). Dwolla raises $5m Series B round led by Union Square Ventures (Video) Dwolla, now at around 20 employees, expects to double in size following its latest raise of funds. Above, the Dwolla team at its meetup in December. Dwolla, an online and mobile payments network based in Des Moines, announced today it raised $5 million in a series B round led by Union Square Ventures of New York, with participation from Village Ventures and Thrive Capital, also of New York, Artists & Instigators of West Conshohocken, Penn.
(Marc Eckō's venture innovation company) and angel investor Paige Craig of Los Angeles-based Betterworks. "The first round, the million-dollar round (in Dec. 2010), was really all about how do we get the product into the marketplace with the right partners? " Fourteen months after its December 2010 national launch, Dwolla boasts more than 80,000 users and a merchant community of more than 7,500 accounts. With strategic investors on board, Milne is now focused on scaling a company he founded in 2008 as a result of his frustration with credit card fees. PayPal taps POS maker Ingenico to expand in-store payment system.
PayPal, which is lining up deals with payment solution providers to help quickly scale its upcoming in-store payment system, struck an agreement with Ingenico, whose point of sale terminals will soon be able to handle PayPal transactions. Ingenico said it has started integrating PayPal transactions using PayPal’s Access Card into its existing point of sale terminals and next generation POS devices. Merchants who rely on Ingenico hardware will be able to accept both types of PayPal transactions including card payments and also purchases using a mobile phone number and PIN. Ingenico has 15 million terminals in use worldwide including 2 million in the United States. The deal is another sign PayPal is moving quickly to ramp up its in-store payment system in preparation for a larger launch in the second quarter. PayPal is working with point of sale terminal makers and software providers to enable PayPal payments at millions of terminals. The terms of the Ingenico deal have not been released.
Apple and Mobile Payments – Predicting the Future | mFoundry Blog. Why is Visa interested in mobile payment company Square? Connect with leaders from the companies in this story, in real life: Come to the fourth annual VentureBeat Mobile Summit April 14-15 in Sausalito, Calif. Request an invitation. Mega credit card company Visa appears to be incredibly impressed with mobile electronic payment startup Square, according to a company blog post.
The post titled “Emerging Payment Types = New Opportunities” starts by spotlighting a recent interview by All Things Digital with Square founder Jack Dorsey and continues by graciously praising the company’s vision as a “big deal.” Square, founded in 2009, has created a small device which attaches to a mobile device to allow the user to accept credit card payments. Currently, the device can be plugged into a smartphone that uses Apple iOS and Google Android, including the iPad. So why is Visa stroking the startup’s ego? Lastly, perhaps Visa is looking to get on Square’s radar for an acquisition. Mobile Payments Videos We Like — Payments Essentials. Digital Money Forum: Camp community. [Dave Birch] There was another thought-provoking BarCampBank in London last month.
Many thanks indeed to Frederic and the gang for pulling it together and a special mention for Sun's super hospitality. As well as catching up with friends and meeting new people, I got to sit in on a series of fascinating discussions. Some of the ideas being kicked around were fairly mainstream, but some were really out of the box (I particularly liked the lunar phase model for hedge fund investment). All I ask from such an event is to go away with more ideas than I came in with, and once again the format and the audience delivered. But what I've been reflecting on since the event is one specific thread: community.
During the day there were some excellent discussions about community banking, community currencies and community enterprise. Now, obviously, I tend to look at these through a very narrow prism -- which is: how can my customers make money from this? Aneace's Blog: A counter-intuitive way to make mobile payments i. Put loyalty and prepaid cards on mobile phones first, which will create the desire to have credit and debit cards as well, integrated into a single transaction. Going the other way, credit cards first, will be extremely challenging. The difference is the value proposition to customers and retailers. The main promise of putting credit and debit cards onto an NFC mobile phone seems to be, "you can leave home without your wallet". That promise is impossible to deliver until the vast majority of retailers accept NFC payments. Customers still have to carry around their wallet, and, from the merchant’s angle, if customers have other payment methods on them anyway, the value of accepting NFC payments is limited.
Some other promise is needed. On the other hand, with loyalty and prepaid cards, Taggo’s promise is, "no more fat wallets". I see loyalty and prepaid cards going onto phones first, then pulling credit and debit cards on in a second phase. Le paiement mobile. Post intéressant repris du Journal de la Silicon Valley par Phil Jeudy Quel est le pourcentage de transactions par carte de crédit et de débit sont payées avec un téléphone mobile ? Environ 2% des volume des cartes de débit et de crédit aux États-Unis en 2013, et 4 % dans le monde, selon les estimations BI Intelligence.
Les chiffres semblent faibles, mais pour les cinq dernières années, les transactions mobiles ont connu une croissance annuelle moyenne de 118% aux États-Unis. Qu’est-ce qu’un paiement mobile ? Les consommateurs utilisent ils vraiment ces solutions ? Et les commerçants ? Qui sera le vainqueur dans cet espace ? Quelle est la “vitesse” de cette innovation ? La disruption est elle toujours possible ? Les spécialistes s’accordent pour dire que le paiement sur téléphones portables n’est pas encore “mainstream”, adopté du grand public. . - Facturation des opérateurs : le consommateur paie par SMS et la dépense est ajoutée à sa facture de téléphone.
Les acteurs du marché français tentent de se mettre d'accord - O. Javelin Strategy and Research » New Opportunities for Banks in A. Prepaid Debit Card Companies: What’s your mobile internet paymen. Mobile devices that connect to the Internet are hot. In fact, Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) predicts that within five years, more people will connect to the Internet using mobile devices than with desktop computers.
The opportunities in mobile are huge. So, prepaid debit card companies, what is your mobile payment strategy? Morgan Stanley published their Mobile Internet Report in December 2009. The report is similar to their famous Internet Report, and contains some fascinating information. For example, the Report predicts monstrous growth in mobile, predicting that The mobile Internet is ramping faster than desktop Internet did, and we believe more users may connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within 5 years.
Morgan Stanley also predicts that the “bubble” associated with mobile Internet could exceed that of the Internet bubble, stating: Material wealth creation / destruction should surpass earlier computing cycles. Huge opportunities. A Revolution in Payments — Payments Views from Glenbrook Partner. Today’s announcement of American Express acquiring Revolution Money caught many of us industry pundits by surprise – especially given the $300 MM price tag that Amex paid for the deal. But, upon reflection, and after listening to the Q&A section of Amex’s conference call earlier today, you can see why they were motivated to do this deal. No question about it – Revolution Money was an innovator – indeed, they were such an extreme innovator that many payments experts dismissed what they were doing – in spite of the list of sterling investors and board members they had acquired along the way.
(See also my partner Bryan Derman’s post – “This Revolution will be Televised! “) It’s been a while since any other new payments company attracted the level of investment funding that Revolution Money did over the last four years. On a Twitter post earlier today, Steve Case said “Revolution Money is great example of 3 P’s of entrepreneurship: people, passion & perseverance. American Express Jumps on the Alt-Payments Bandwagon in a Big Wa.