Online and mobile payment service Dwolla has announced that all transactions under $10 will have no fee from now on. This is of course great news for small businesses and merchants whose average transaction is below that. Anything above still carries the flat $0.25 fee.
The company has a history of experimentation, and the payments space is certainly ripe for disruption from any number of angles, but it’s still not clear what has enabled this particular move. After all, operational overhead is a real thing, and while nobody doubts the company’s honest interest in changing payment processing, it’s not likely they just did this in the spirit of the season.
In all likelihood it has something to do with the announcement they’re planning for two weeks from now, which will mark the company’s first birthday and, according to CEO Ben Milne, represent a major and “necessary” platform pivot by the company.
Chances are that the mobile payment service has seen obstacles to its growth that are insurmountable in its current form. While a few thousand satisfied customers is nothing to complain about, the market is much, much larger than that and perhaps this “confusing” change might be the alternative to that slow expiration common to inflexible startups.
We’ll have that news when it hits. In the meantime Dwolla users should probably gather their wits about them in case the changes are less than suitable for their purposes.
