Dwolla - $1 Million Per Day Transaction Volume
The leading payment gateway allowing Bitcoiners in the U.S. to move funds to and from Bitcoin exchanges has reached a new milestone. Today Dwolla shared via a blog post that it is now processing $1 million dollars worth of transactions per day.
Dwolla’s CEO Ben Milne (@bpmilne) was interviewed by Silicon Prarie News and in the video of that interview he shares his belief that the products coming out of Dwolla will, in five to ten years, be part of everyone’s daily life. Referring to the next product Dwolla will release he says “I think noone sees this one coming.”
It was little over a month ago that Dwolla announced it had first reached $1 million per week and as the infographic for this post shows, Dwolla’s growth has “hockey sticked”.
With Dwolla being among the least expensive methods for transferring USD funds ($0.25 to send money) and the fact that those transfers are non-reversible (no chargebacks) it is used widely with Bicoin exchanges. When Dwolla’s previous milestone was reached, Milne had commented “I can’t go a day without talking about [virtual currency] or being asked about it”.
There are now at least five market exchanges where Dwolla transfers are accepted:
There also are fixed-rate exchanges accepting Dwolla funds as well. In addition, individual traders in the U.S. using the #bitcoin-otc marketplace and Bitmarket.eu OTC exchanges are mostly fond of Dwolla as well.
When there are complaints they generally are related to the amount of time that passes after Dwolla customers first signup as the underlying ACH transactions take several days to complete. Additionally, funds must be held in a Dwolla account in order to send instantly so even customers with verified accounts are often frustrated waiting on ACH transfers.
Dwolla acknowledges that clearing times for transactions between Dwolla and the banks are too long and it is making progress with a method for resolving this. Banks and credit unions with FiSync will allow transfers to clear instantly or at least on the same day, in many instances. The trials have begun and at least one credit union has gone live with FISync..
Banks do already have same-day transfer wire transfer services however the fees and inconveniences for those mean they are not feasible for use by individual traders and by consumers for transactions. The industry is dabbling with a same-day ACH method but that appears to be gaining little traction.
The aim of these efforts is to provide low cost, non-reversible payments that clear nearly immediately. This is the reason Bitcoin has such a bright future. When bitcoins are transferred, the transaction is instant, funds are available for spending within minutes and the fees for doing so are just a fraction of those charged by Dwolla even.
The ability to transact between bitcoins and funds from banks is crucial to Bitcoin’s success and without Dwolla Bitcoin would not be where it is today. It appears that without Bitcoin, Dwolla would likely not be where they are today either. It is great to see them succeed.
[Update: The list of market exchanges where Dwolla is used was edited to remove one whose Dwolla service is unavailable “at the moment”.]
[Update 2: Mt. Gox processed nearly $7 million in transfers to and from Dwolla in June, according to a forum post by Mt. Gox’s CEO.]
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Tags: dwolla, milestone, bitcoin, bank, banks, banking, bitcoins, million, transactions, transaction, billion, dollars, transfer, digital currency, ach, bank wire, wire, bank transfer, fisync,