Dwolla Says Its Grid Payment Network Is More Secure than Card Networks

Dwolla says its "Grid" transaction network will be more secure than the Visa and MasterCard card networks. 


"Every time you swipe your card, you're leaving behind the actual information that would be used with that card," says Ben Milne, Dwolla founder and chief executive. "Every time you engage in a transaction, you're leaving behind information in places you don't even know you're leaving it."

That's an exposure potential users, merchants, card issuers and transaction networks must live with, to some extent. "What we're trying to ask is, if they had or could start over today, would they knowingly let merchants or hardware providers store credit card information that could be used to commit fraud?" says Milne.

That same question can be asked about most parts of the payments business, in fairness. Were we starting over, today, we might lean on customer-owned terminals and access rather than retailer-owned terminals and access, for example.

Most of the $1 million per week in transactions coming through Dwolla are online payments, says Milne. The highest dollar transactions are business-to-business transfers and consumer-to-business payments such as rent. But the new growth is in mobile, Milne says.

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