Fintech company leverages innovative payments to help customers build credit

To power the Extra Debit Card, they needed to be able to connect a user's bank account and give them a spending limit and an adjustable line of credit based on their balance. When the debit card is swiped, their line of credit is used and Extra is paid using the bank account balance. Because the debit card is separate from the line of credit draw, Extra can take the total payments made and report those to the credit bureaus to help users build their credit score. 

To power these money movements critical to their business, Extra needed to find a payments partner that had a simple API, was flexible and secure, and also allowed them to build one cohesive system that digitally transformed how their card would function. 

“I like to say the lack of innovation is the real ‘bad guy’ in this space,” said Summerlin. “Money moves so much faster now than back when credit scores were invented. We wanted to capture the speed of money movement today, and Dwolla’s solution is the core piece that helped us digitally transform our funds flow that powers the whole process that makes our product work. The ease of use with Dwolla’s API has been key in powering our funds flow in the distinctive way we wanted it to work and was one of the most appealing aspects of Dwolla’s solution. Additionally, being bank-agnostic and allowing us to distribute our funds to multiple partners was key for us.”