Dwolla with Yasser Abou-Nasr | E256

Account to account payments infrastructure.

On today's episode of Fintech Impact we have Yasser Abou-Nasr, Senior Vice President of product at Dwolla. The company is a payment infrastructure company specifically specializing in account-to-account transfers.

Episode Highlights

  • 0.30: Dwolla is a modern payments platform that really becomes an engine that a lot of our Fintech or software companies or corporate enterprises want to embed in their stacks because they actually have sophisticated a2a problems that they want to solve, says Yasser.

  • 1.42: When Dwolla was launched 10 plus years ago, they launched a consumer facing product that was really designed around moving money very simply doing simple ACH amongst peers or businesses.

  • 2.20: There was a decision to make a pivot around 2016 where Dwolla focused on helping businesses get paid and payout necessary use cases that really have to pay payments through modern API.

  • 6.11: One use case we are seeing is that people being really creative with helping that are under underprivileged and how they are able to leverage our platform to make cash flow readily available for those, says Yasser.

  • 8.04: It's just amazing to see how many different people are realizing the opportunities to embedded finance and finding that Dwolla is kind of that opportunity and that really helping us position and go to market. 

  • 9.18: Some customers use us as essentially, they are able to give cash advances to their drivers and their drivers are able to kind of pay back those loans as well through our network, says Yasser.

  • 12.21: Yasser wants to go ahead and be that payment service provider where they can actually leverage the data, make smart decisions and actually get payments to the financial Institute.

  • 15.47: Yasser says that they are looking at data aggregation and enrichment for them to bring other value adds to kind of help enrich the transaction or the decisions or the risk behind those transactions.

  • 17.05: RFP, request for payment is going to do some amazing things. Yasser has learned from other markets like India that they're way mature with instant payments. 

  • 19.01: Any type of position has risk involved with that and if Yasser can minimize risk and increase that position for a faster funding, then everything kind of follows right behind it.

  • 21.35: Yasser has seen some aspect of Venmo that they are creating a2a or peer-to-peer type transaction but how does he move it from peer-to-peer to see to be that's the challenge because now that's going to be really interesting.

  • 24.55: There are endless possibilities with a2a payments and that's what gets Yasser excited and kind of really coming in every day.

3 Key Points

  1. Everyone in vertical SaaS companies is trying to disrupt the certain industry that has pain points or problems especially around funding or positioning, says Yasser.

  2. The banks are just not best positioned especially when it comes to API's and how they want to manage innovation and Fintech find a big struggle to work with banks.

  3. The fact that open banking is regulated has really pushed a lot of innovation in a2a because of consumer piece, says Yasser.

Tweetable Quotes

  • "We actually power complex a2a payments as well and because of our solution people come to us." – Yasser

  • "Effectively you are the pipes that no consumer sees but alleviates frustration when it happens." – Jason

  • "We are excited about all the different use cases in industries around. We ran a report earlier and we see ourselves in 80 different industries." – Yasser

  • "You are one of the best arguments in favor of open banking I have seen, and you are already seeing innovation happen in areas that no one would have thought." - Jason

Resources Mentioned

Fintech ImpactJason PereiraFintech