Dwolla is Hiring: Business Developer – FinTech Edition

As a part of our hiring series at Dwolla, which we kicked off last week with our new designer position, we’re announcing a new business developer position has opened up and this time it’s for our fintech product, FiSync.

FiSync was a hit, a big hit. We were honored with Best of Show (along with our friends MoneyDesktop, BillGuard, SoMoLend and a few others), got some great coverage and received a long queue of integration requests via our FiSync portal.  So we’ve decided to step up and meet demand by bringing on another business developer to facilitate and maintain integrations with our financial partners.

Ideally, we’re looking for someone with a background and unique take on financial services. You need to speak both tech and business fluently. We’re looking for someone who can help us grow, build, and maintain relationships in the financial industry. Are you the builder we’re looking for? Check out the following for a little more detail:

At Dwolla, we move fast, very fast. Considering the industry hasn’t changed in 50+ years, we are moving at lightning speed and we’ll need you to keep up. We like people with strong convictions about their work, who will take the bull by the horns. And we’re not talking the bulls on the streets of Seville, we’re talking Wall Street, major banks and financial institutions. You know that speed comes from proactively addressing the needs of your customers, not from cutting corners.

We build things.  You know it’s not an exact science, but building and maintaining relationships is a calculated art and, to prove it, you have a network that was built on handshakes and late night dinners, not just on LinkedIn. You’re about stoking and adding wood to the fire, not cold calling.  You are creative, innovative and responsive when it comes to working with the product as it is, but you’ll also be crucial in the long-term development of the product too. You will help serve as Dwolla’s liaison to our financial institution customers and be a keeper of the FiSync product.

We work together. We’re always working closely with others, internally and externally, to solve one of the nation’s biggest problems.  You need proven relationship management skills and a track record of collaboration, communication and problem-solving. You respond to the good and the bad positively, and you’re able to communicate the needs of your industry proactively to our team of engineers to make the product better.

We learn every day. At Dwolla, we wear many hats, even if they don’t fit at first.  Be prepared to push the boundaries of a traditional relationship management role from time to time. You will apply your experience in working in the financial industry, but you’ll also be charged with responsibilities that may require you to step outside your skill set to get the job done.

The bottom line: You understand the implications of FiSync and won’t rest until every financial institution offers real-time innovation to their customers. You will help build and maintain financial institution relationships that will provide the foundation for the nation’s 21st century payment network.

Please get in touch; just send an email to jobs@dwolla.com with a resumé. We’d love to hear from you.

Growing up, one TOS at a time

We operate in +$33.9 trillion dollar sandbox. Naturally, there are a lot of rules (about 99% of which are there to protect you, the account holder). Today we’re rolling out some changes to the Terms of Service that we believe better clarifies the network’s responsibilities, outlines its partnerships, and, most importantly, keeps the community safe, friendly and informed. (more…)

Dwolla for your latte: Save your favorite coffee bar some cash

“I’ll have a 12 oz. soy latte, and I’ll be paying with Dwolla.”

This is something that coffee shops in Central Iowa are becoming accustomed to hearing.

Coffee shops like Amici, Smokey Row, Mars Cafe, and Village Bean have become the old faithful of the caffeinated Dwolla’ers moving around the city, while new places keep popping up, like Ritual Café, Zanzibar’s, and Timbuktuu. In fact, we’ve seen quite the Dwolla adoption in coffee establishments not only here in Des Moines, but also in cities all across the nation. Elemental Coffee Roasters in Oklahoma City even hosted a Dwolla meetup for us earlier this year.

Maybe it’s the fact that coffee shops attract the technology-oriented that are more willing to pay with their phone, or maybe it’s that our customers are all caffeine addicts, but coffee shops tend to make up one of our larger merchant categories. But the thing is, you don’t have to be tech-savvy to get a business to sign up for Dwolla, or to pay them.

If you are a coffee shop wanting to accept payments, or if you are a loyal coffee drinker who wants your favorite coffee shop to start accepting Dwolla, here are some great things to keep in mind:

• Account setup is free, whether you’re a merchant, non-profit, or personal user. It takes about 5 minutes to set up an account, and there are no merchant contracts or hidden sign-up fees.
• There is no fee for transactions under $10 (perfect for that $3.75 latte, huh?) and transactions over $10 is only  $0.25 on transactions. Check out our gateway fee calculator to see how we match up against the competition.
• All you need to monitor incoming payments is a device that connects to the internet (phone, iPod touch, iPad, computer, etc). Use the Dwolla kiosk for an easy and safe way to view incoming transactions in real-time.
• No mandatory account balance(s).
• Printable and exportable statements are available from within every Dwolla account.
• New merchants automatically receive a Dwolla Spot, a stationary pin for patrons to pay via our mobile apps.
• Mobile? Maybe they have a coffee cart or are a vendor at the local farmer’s market. Activate Proxi! This is a beacon-like feature available on our smartphone apps that lets other Dwolla users pay based solely on how close they are to the merchant!
• Have an existing POS? We integrate with them. Just have them add a new tender in the checkout, give it the same characteristics as “cash” or “check,” and name it “Dwolla!”

From my personal experience, a lot of people feel a sense of loyalty towards the local businesses that they frequent. I’ve talked to people that will use only Dwolla or cash when paying these businesses because they hate using their credit card there, knowing that the merchant only gets a small percentage of their transaction. I also know people that will go out of their way to find a merchant that accepts Dwolla, just because they feel like it using it.

Coffee drinkers, go forth and Dwolla for your latte, and save your favorite coffee makers a truck load in interchange fees.

Dwolla’s design team is growing!

Good news! We will be announcing a series of new positions that we are looking to fill in the near future, so look for our announcements on available positions in the coming weeks! This week, we’d like to announce that we are looking to hire a designer to join our awesome design team.

We are looking for someone to help us design a better payment experience and disrupt an industry that hasn’t changed much in 50+ years. Sound good? We’d love to have you. The following is what we’re looking for in a lil’ more detail.

We want only kickass human beings to join our team. If you think of yourself as a unicorn, ninja, rock star, gummy bear, or even Batman-like, we don’t mind. Please just leave the ego at the door! Having a passion for great design and an eye for detail is paramount. We need to feel that you care deeply about your craft.

We move fast. Very fast. We like people with strong convictions about their work, who will take the bull by the horns. And because we have such a quick production cycle, we need good listeners who respond positively and quickly to feedback.

We work together. We’re constantly working closely with others to iterate on ideas and solutions to some of the nation’s biggest problems. We’ll expect you to easily communicate with people on different teams, with different personalities. We’re a big (small) family, so it’s important to us that everyone plays nicely together.

We build things. We’re looking for people who want to come to work every day and invent something new. We’re looking for people who desire to create new experiences and are not afraid to make a few mistakes along the way. Design is an evolution, not an exact science. The less of a cookie cutter you are, the more you’ll fit in. Experience working in both the digital and print space is fantastic, but if we had to choose, we’d pick digital any day. Bonus points for knowledge of HTML9 and CSS7.

We learn every day. At Dwolla, we wear many hats, even if they don’t fit at first. For example, people access our apps from the web and from their mobile devices, so there’s a good chance you’ll also be designing for the iOS and Android platforms. Of course, we’d really like to talk about what you specialize in and what you’re passionate about, but be prepared to push the boundaries of your creativity and skill set from time to time.

The bottom line: We want you to help us design and build how people experience our brand. Something you can be proud to tell mom and dad about. We talk to ours daily, and trust us, they’re very proud of what we do.

Please get in touch; just send an email to jobs@dwolla.com with a resumé and link to your work. We’d love to hear from you.

Dwolla: How we’re different (Episode 1)

Dwolla is a payment network, but it doesn’t operate in the same way a lot of other systems do. We’ve been building a series of images to demonstrate how Dwolla works in general and how Dwolla compares to other systems.

So episode 1 of the graphic series is this: How Dwolla works in relation to traditional payment networks.

There are obviously a lot more moving pieces to this inside that we’ll be diving into with additional graphics but on a very core level, this is really what makes Dwolla wonderful.

It makes a very complex thing, more simple than it is right now. That’s the idea… And in the process make the cost structure easier to understand.