Dwolla: Thinking outside the box

[BDBoop]

This 28-Year-Old's Startup Is Moving $350 Million And Wants To Completely Kill Credit Cards - Business Insider

We interviewed Milne about how he is building a credit card killer and Square rival from the middle of the nation where VCs and press are scarce.

BI: We hear you're making credit card companies angry. How are you doing that?

Ben Milne: Ultimately we're trying to build the next Visa, not the next PayPal. We're building a human network based on how we think the future of payments will work. The current model needs to be blown up.

Dwolla started out of my old company. I owned a speaker manufacturing company and we sold everything directly through a website. I got really obsessed with interchange fees and how not to pay them. Every time a merchant gets paid with a credit card they have to give up a percentage. In my case, I was losing $55,000 a year to credit card companies. I felt like they were stealing from me -- I was getting paid and somebody was taking money out of my pocket.

So I thought, how do I get paid through a website without paying credit card fees? We pitched a bank, and amazingly enough they said, "We'll give it a shot."

That was three years ago, so we've been working on the project for a really long time. In December of last year we figured out how to legally do what we do.

This is going to be a company to keep an eye on.

 

[johnniegolfer]

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