Dwolla’s Grid API could make cash more secure than plastic

If you’ve become a fan of peer-to-peer payment service Dwolla, today holds a great piece of news. If you’ve not yet become familiar with it, let’s just sum it up by having you read this piece first.

In an effort to make Dwolla an even more household name, the company has just released its API, known as Grid. What’s important about this, though, is that the payments are going through a completely new type of system that holds user privacy as paramount. In fact, according to Dwolla CEO Ben Milne, it’s the way that credit card companies would operate today, if they could:

If Visa could blow up their current payment model and start over today, would they build a network that forces consumers to expose critical financial data in order to buy a bagel? What technologies and methods could Dwolla implement today to scale against fraud tomorrow?

In short, the Grid system will allow you to use your Dwolla account with more merchants, and even cash-based transactions. In fact, market-rattling startup Zaarly has already signed up, it would seem.

• Provide third party developers with the tools needed to create a seamless purchasing experience in an app or an online purchase (no more entering painful credit card numbers!)
• Validate a new kind of payment network, one that doesn’t leave behind personal information.
• Serves as platform for future integration into mobile applications (Zaarly, Square, Google wallet, Mint, etc.)
• Puts consumers, not networks, in control of who can access, their payment information, and to what degree (allows users to revoke and alter third-party access to your payment network)…
• Grant developers first time access to a payment network and its core technologies (in our case, location based c2b payments, social integration for p2p, 25 cent payment network)

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We had the chance to sit and talk with Dwolla CEO Ben Milne about the new Grid service, and about payments in general. While you’re waiting for more developers to integrate Grid, have a listen to Milne’s thoughts on the industry and where Dwolla fits in.

Ben Milne of Dwolla by The Next Web