Honesty is always the best policy.

We ran into a hiccup this morning and Dwolla experienced ~30 minutes of interruption.   This affected the registration process for about ~1 hour. Regardless of the fact that it’s fixed, we still owe you an explanation.

What caused it?

Growth and our Facebook integration (Our fault, not Facebooks). The Facebook process we were using was technologically inefficient and as a result has been modified.

What fixed it?

3 things.

• A few Dwolla developers and admins who were on this thing immediately.
• A killer hosting partner.
• A change to the FB process.

Lastly

We get rid of credit card fees….. and Des Moines is the capital of mobile payments?

I’m on the road right now, which isn’t much different than any other week, but the last 2 days have been pretty interesting.

I woke up in San Francisco yesterday to find this in Read Write Web:

Today I found myself in Menlo Park and my phone started blowing up with this in Business Insider:

Being mentioned with Quora, Dropbox, BankSimple, KickStarter, Markerbot, and Instagram is a pretty darn cool thing for us no matter how you slice it.

Des Moines is making the news regardless of where I am and that feels even better.

I’m not going to act like this was a long time coming or something. It took a lot of work and a lot of dumb luck just like anything else but to see this stuff feels pretty amazing.

A big thanks to Des Moines, you guys, and the entire Dwolla team. I’m happy there’s a lot more in the pipeline

Major changes to the registration process

Thankfully the registration process has received some much needed love.

When we ask what sucked about Dwolla, the registration process was something we consistently heard.

So we changed it, considerably. It’s now faster, prettier and more mobile friendly. We also made the process a little easier by allowing you to connect to Facebook upfront. This pre-populates most of the registration fields and immediately adds your friends to your Dwolla contacts.

The new process has taken a lot of the pain out signing up for Dwolla.

(more…)

On December 15th, Dwolla will change as we know it.

It’s been a heck of a year. We have learned a lot about the marketplace, payments, and we’ve had the chance to improve the platform considerably.

On Dec 15th, we are doing two things:

1. Celebrating the growth and our first year in the national marketplace.

2. Changing our platform. There are major advancements coming to Dwolla. The architecture is going to change on Dec 15th and time will tell if you love us or hate us for the direction we’ve decided to take the company.

We think this is a necessary pivot to concentrate on the greater goal of the company, building a network.

Dwolla is not a feature, it’s a network… And on Dec 15th… Nothing will be more obvious.

Please register to attend here.

I hope you’ll save the date and join us for what will most undoubtedly be the biggest and most confusing thing we’ve ever done. It will also be the first thing we’ve ever done which instantly effects everyone who loves -and hates- Dwolla.

. . . . 

O how things change in a year… Photo by Anna Jones @ Mars Cafe meetup when we launched nationally last December.

Dwolla Island(s)?

Whidbey Island in Washington, may be the coolest place on earth …and that’s without JoAnna Weeks.

JoAnna is the owner of WhidbeyLocal.com, a great business dedicated to promoting local merchants on Whidbey Island. With that kind of commitment to community, it’s no surprise that JoAnna is launching an all out campaign to help educate merchants and residents on the benefits provided by our network, Dwolla.

As cool as it will be to see an entire island covered in orange, we’re just jacked to have users, like JoAnna, out there across the country. Dwolla is growing, and without traditional marketing and advertising budgets (aka $0), because of people dedicated to a better payment future.

Ben is currently in Dublin (noticing the island theme?) for the Web Summit and F.ounders conference. I was up early this morning  watching the Livestream when he spoke on stage with several European payment luminaries. (more…)