In a hot real estate market like the one we’re living through today, the ability to send and receive funds quickly is more important than ever. Waiting several days for a paper check to clear or for electronic funds to settle can be the difference between a client owning their dream home or getting entangled in a bidding war.
Real estate companies and escrow holders are using a digital payments platform to collect earnest money deposits and commissions electronically, eliminating the need to manually deliver paper checks or conduct real estate transactions in person. Dwolla’s API is their sophisticated connection to the ACH Network, providing this digital payments platform with an account-to-account payment solution to facilitate real estate transactions.
“Whether it be rental, sales, escrow deposits, earnest money deposits, paying your own agents as a real estate company, sending refunds, sending payments; any real estate transaction you can think of—we can do it because of Dwolla,” says the CEO and Founder of this real estate digital payments platform.
‘Speed is Everything’
The CEO founded this real estate digital payments platform on the idea that the burden and liability associated with paper checks and wire transfers in real estate transactions needed to be solved. A former real estate agent and broker, the CEO knew very little about payment facilitation until his research on payment service providers led him to Dwolla.
The combination of excellent customer service, faster payment options, a flexible API and higher transaction limits sold this real estate platform on Dwolla as their payment service provider.
Today, any licensed real estate brokerage, attorney or company authorized to hold escrow funds can sign up for the digital payments platform.
“Dwolla has become the backbone of our company,” the CEO says. “If we can’t transfer money, we’re out of business.”
When this real estate digital payments platform went live with Dwolla as their account-to-account payment solution, the company used standard ACH transaction timing to facilitate real estate transactions. When clients started requesting faster payment options, the real estate platform added Same Day ACH transaction timing to their suite of features.
“Same Day ACH allowed us to market ourselves in a way that made us more attractive because we’re transferring the money faster,” the CEO says. “Speed is important. Being able to cut those times down took a lot of burden off our support inquiries.”This real estate digital payments solution added Same Day ACH transactions and experienced 212% growth in new client contracts, 376% growth in payment transactions and 483% growth in the dollar amount of funds transferred through the platform.
“Speed is everything when you’re buying a home or renting an apartment,” the CEO says. “That’s where Same Day ACH has made a difference for us.”
Configurable API to Meet Your Needs
While speed is crucial to real estate transactions, it’s also important to have control over transaction timing and risk mitigation.
The Chief Technology Officer of the real estate digital payments platform says he’s able to configure the Dwolla API based on the needs of specific clients. As a result, the real estate platform can easily toggle between standard ACH and Same Day ACH depending on the end user or the use case.
It can slow down a transaction to standard ACH timing in the event of a redirect, for example, if a tenant doesn’t have enough money in their account when funds are debited to pay rent. Rather than having to go to an end-user (the landlord) to try and get money back, the real estate platform can avoid the situation on the front end by slowing down the transaction.
Integrating the Dwolla API has provided even more benefits than faster payments to this platform’s end users, including:
- Maintaining their company branding.
- Real-time notifications on payment statuses via webhooks.
- Detailed addenda records allow for robust reconciliation.
- Streamlined client experience.
“Clients love the addenda records because of the insight it provides on specific transactions,” the CTO says. “That type of detailed reporting gives us an advantage in a competitive industry.”
The Backbone of Payment Facilitation
Another differentiator for this real estate platform is the level of customer service Dwolla provides.
When a customer has a question or a member of the engineering team needs assistance, Dwolla’s “fast turnaround of customer support” allows the real estate platform to quickly find solutions for end users and within their own team.
“Every time I’ve ever talked to anybody about Dwolla, the first thing that comes to mind is the customer service and the ability to get a response from a human being quickly,” the CTO says. “Having that fast turnaround of customer support has made our business thrive.”
As this digital payments solution continues down its path of “exponential growth,” they expect Dwolla to keep quietly powering faster payments for the real estate platform.
Learn more about modernizing your real estate transactions in our latest guide: Transforming Real Estate Payments with Dwolla.
