It’s all about instant money transfers. And elimination of credit card processing fees. That is the double-barreled reason the $2.2 billion Veridian Credit Union in Waterloo, Iowa has now adopted the FiSync payments platform from Des Moines-headquartered Dwolla, said Veridian executive Eric Kinman, manager of marketing.
“We are rolling this out to our 167,000 members,” said Kinman who acknowledged that Veridian had recently investigated multiple person-to-person payments technologies but it had decided to adopt Dwolla, a company that is supported by Des Moines-based The Members Group, which specializes in payments and card processing technologies.
He said Veridian expected quick adoption by merchants because they will benefit both from dramatically lower fees and instant availability of funds in their account.
Around 650 Veridian members have already “synced their Dwolla accounts,” said Kinman, who indicated Veridian expects the growth in member usage to happen “organically,” that is, with minimal overt marketing. “We think members will see the value and will adopt it on their own.”
“The core purpose of FiSync is a real-time transfer system that allows money to move from one bank account to another, in real-time, and without using any of the existing systems, networks or resellers. It’s that simple”, said Ben Milne, Dwolla founder, in a prepared statement. “Insured, regulated and secure, financial institutions are amazing at protecting their customers’ funds, so our goal with FiSync wasn’t to design a product that challenges the way the industry holds and earns money, but to speed up the way it moves and add value to the way we exchange it.“
“Dwolla is changing how money moves,” added Veridian’s Kinman, who quipped: “We adopted this because we didn’t want to wind up a Kodak in an Instagram world.” The latter of course is an apps developer – built around tools for sharing images via mobile phones – which Facebook recently acquired for $1 billion.
