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Dwolla Gets a Check (To Do Away with Checks)

Today Dwolla announced a new financing led by A16Z with Scott Weiss joining the board. The funding will go towards establishing a new office in San Francisco, an expanded presence in New York and much needed additions to the team in Des Moines starting with a lot of engineering hires. I am of course excited about this as an investor but even more so as a user of Dwolla. It already works well for me in in paying contractors but I can’t wait for it to be more broadly available. It is 2013 after...

Dwolla and Iowa (I Love the Midwest)

Sorry, no Tech Tuesday today (due to my travel schedule). Quite fortunately that creates an opening for a brief post about Dwolla, Iowa and the Midwest more generally. I spent my first year in the US as an exchange student in Rochester, Minnesota and came away with a real fondness for the Midwest. I am still in touch with my host family who provided a wonderful experience including travel to the far North of Minnesota and North and South Dakota. One of the things I came to appreciate in parti...

What Do AAPL and AMZN Have, that GOOG, Twitter and FB Need?

Each has more than 100 Million credit cards on file to enable 1-click purchases of content, apps, and virtual goods. When I compare doing anything involving payment on other platforms the experience is cumbersome to the point of being useless. My 10-year old son had no trouble hijacking my Kindle, finding the store and getting a book for himself. And that’s on the Kindle! On his iPod touch he blew through the app budget we had set for the month within the first two days of having it. It will ...

Online Payments Need Shaking Up

Over at DailyLit (my wife’s company), some books are free and others require payment. Right now, DailyLit accepts credit card and PayPal. From that I have some good first hand experience with online payments. Based on that here are some of reasons why the existing solutions are painful and ready for disruption: 1. The fees are outrageous. Not only do the card companies take a cut but you also pay for a gateway fee. With PayPal you just pay them, but again it’s a hefty fee. Now it is well know...

Time for Google to Step up Payments

Apple app store subscription policy is a clear case of overreaching. I have written before about how I don’t think the 30% take rate for Apple is justified or sustainable. Extending that pricing to an ongoing relationship is particularly problematic. The argument – made by no less than Jobs himself – that Apple should be entitled to a 30% cut for a “new subscriber” seems to suggest that these subscribers simply would not exist without Apple. While true that Apple has built a hugely innovative...

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Google Wallet and In-App Transactions

Google’s announcement of the initial availability of Google Wallet was interesting but not because of any immediate impact. Initially, this will be the equivalent of a large field trial as it will be available only on Nexus S phones and only on Sprint. Much of the coverage has focused on using Wallet to pay merchants in the real world (e.g. in a Cab or at Macy’s), but Google Wallet has far reaching implications for apps and in-app transactions. If Google Wallet offers APIs that can be accesse...