Software gives finance departments the opportunity to do more by working less.
This concept was discussed during a lunch meeting in 2016 by a pair of software developers, and they couldn’t stop talking about how difficult it was for a business to transact with another business. From collecting information to authorizing payments, there had to be a better way—or so they discussed.
That lunch meeting led to hundreds of product discovery interviews with companies across the United States and eventually a simple, yet robust software platform.
Powered by Dwolla’s ACH payment API, this software platform streamlines business-to-business payments with its ACH transactions. Working with customers across industries, including real estate and entertainment, finance departments are finding new ways to spend their time.
“We are building a platform that is building software for finance and accounting departments,” says the CEO & Co-Founder of this payment software platform. “We have found that those departments are usually underrepresented in the sense that they may not have the latest technology. So we’re helping these companies streamline their processes and implement better policies.”
The CEO says this software platform is trimming time spent on bookkeeping by 70% with another 30% saved on transaction costs.
“I did not expect our platform to be this well received,” the CEO says. “The ability to build software that isn’t just good, but human, is really hard. We’ve been able to win customers because of that and because of the work we do with Dwolla.”
Personable Software
In May 2017—prior to building their platform—the CEO and his co-founder (the company’s CTO) were accepted into Y Combinator, a 90-day accelerator for early-stage startups. Based on that experience, the CEO and the CTO estimated they would need six months to build a prototype.
“We did it in six weeks,” the CEO says. “And mostly thanks to Dwolla.”
While the two co-founders were building out their platform, they were integrating with Dwolla. After “a lot of conversations” with members of Dwolla’s sales and customer support teams, the pair was able to build a solution and test in the Dwolla Sandbox against various scenarios.
“We went from testing our application to up and running with a new payments integration in six weeks, that speaks for itself,” the CEO says, referring to the Dwolla Sandbox. “There were no surprises going from testing in Dwolla’s Sandbox to the production environment. I think there’s just initial shock when your application is facilitating live transactions and feeling the need to constantly monitor all of them.
“What’s unique about Dwolla is their stronghold on ACH. And for business payments, ACH transactions for an invoice is usually more preferable. Dwolla helps us initiate ACH transfers which is huge in the B2B community. Paying out someone has to be timely and prompt. With Dwolla and leveraging the ACH Network, we have the ability to be relevant in this market.”
“Dwolla really is best in class,” the CEO says. “Dwolla has this wonderful API and a great platform, but Dwolla is human. That’s different and it really matters.”
Reducing Manual Tasks
Before this payment software platform, the CEO says one of their customers had an accounting department that was manually typing account and routing numbers more than 400 times, then licking and mailing over 250 envelopes each month, just to make their payments.
“We replaced that business’ manual payment process,” the CEO says. “They are now saving thousands of dollars each week and an immeasurable amount of time by using [our] platform. Not only did they have to perform these tasks each month, then they also had to manage all the questions about where the money is.
“We do that for them now.”
Keeping that process short and sweet was important to the CEO since so many people are already hesitant to give out their banking information, and building out a seamless onboarding experience was crucial.
“Dwolla has helped train us in how to work well with other providers,” the CEO says. “We are much more professional, we know the questions to ask and we know the right way to do things when integrating and working with a team.”
This payment software platform achieves excellence by consistently focusing on doing little things well over time, constantly improving and consistently providing first-class customer support. Those initiatives found a supportive partner in Dwolla.
“It’s not easy being a fintech company,” the CEO says. “There are always questions about where the money is. One of the reasons we choose to keep working with Dwolla is there are a lot of cases where a transaction is delayed or you don’t know what happened, just having that ability to reach out to an actual person and resolve that quickly, then pass that information on to our customers as promptly as possible, that’s really awesome.”
Interested in learning more about Dwolla? Schedule a payments consultation today.
