Welcome back to the TWIF podcast!

We're lucky to be joined today by Dave Glaser, CEO of American payments giant Dwolla, one of the first-ever fintechs.

Dwolla is a fintech company that provides businesses with a connection to the ACH Network or RTP Network (The Clearing House’s privately-owned real-time payments network).

The company was founded in 2008 and launched in the United States in 2010 to a few small banks and retailers. By June 2011, Dwolla had grown to 15 employees, 20,000 users, and $1 million in weekly processing volume.

Today, Dwolla has about 650 clients and about 30 million users. It processed $45 billion in payments in 2022, up from $30 billion in 2021 and $20 billion in 2019. About 80% of its clients are small businesses.

Dwolla provides a white label service consisting of APIs to use ACH and white label services expanded from payouts to include instant bank authorization for debiting bank accounts.

Dave Glaser has a long history in fintech: Starting at the turn of the century, he led payment protection and anti-fraud company CyberSource through its 2014 acquisition by Visa, before going on to join Worldpay in the UK as its Chief Product and Marketing Officer for Global eCommerce. Coming back to the US, Dave was brought on by Mastercard as a Senior Vice President for Acceptance Solutions, before being offered the President and COO role at Dwolla and stepping up as CEO in 2023.

🎧 Dwolla CEO Dave Glaser: Pay-by-bank, running an Ironman, and where US payments go from here

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🎧 Dwolla CEO Dave Glaser: Pay-by-bank, running an Ironman, and where US payments go from here by This Week in Fintech’s Podcast

We’re lucky to be joined today by Dave Glaser, CEO of American payments giant Dwolla, one of the first fintechs. Dwolla is a fintech company that provides businesses with a connection to the ACH Network or RTP Network (The Clearing House’s privately-owned real-time payments network). The company was founded in 2008 and launched in the United States in December 2010 to a few small banks and retailers. By June 2011, Dwolla had grown to 15 employees, 20,000 users, and $1 million in weekly processing volume. Today, Dwolla has about 650 clients and about 30 million users. It processed $45 billion in payments in 2022, up from $30 billion in 2021 and $20 billion in 2019. About 80% of its clients are small businesses. Dwolla provides a white label service consisting of APIs to use the ACH system[9] and white label services expanded from payouts to include instant bank authorization for debiting bank accounts. Dave Glaser has a long history in fintech: Starting at the turn of the century, he led payment protection and anti-fraud company CyberSource through its 2014 acquisition by Visa, before going on to join Worldpay in the UK as its Chief Product and Marketing Officer for Global eCommerce. Coming back to the US, Dave was brought on by Mastercard as a Senior Vice President for Acceptance Solutions, before being offered the President and COO role at Dwolla and stepping up as CEO in 2023. 💡This is a Sponsored Episode.

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🎧 Dwolla CEO Dave Glaser: Pay-by-bank, running an Ironman, and where US payments go from here

Podcast Episode · This Week in Fintech’s Podcast · 12/05/2024 · 46m

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Summary

Dave Glaser, CEO of Dwolla, discusses the evolution of the payments industry, highlighting Dwolla's role in account-to-account payments. He detailed his career journey from CyberSource to Visa and Mastercard, emphasizing the importance of innovation and security in payments.

Glaser noted Dwolla's pivot from consumer to business payments, focusing on digitally transforming enterprises. He highlighted the potential of pay by bank and open banking, the challenges of fraud, and the future of payments orchestration.

Glaser also shared his personal experience training for and completing an Ironman triathlon.

Transcript

Nik Milanovic  00:00

Thank you everyone for coming back to This Week in Fintech for our podcast. I'm Nik Milanovic, and I am joined today by Dave Glaser, the CEO of Dwolla. For those who don't know, Dave has over 20 years of experience in the payments industry. His background includes leadership roles at Mastercard, Worldpay, CyberSource and Visa, and he's played key roles in driving industry innovation and business payment operations across all these companies. So I'm really excited to talk with somebody who is a seasoned veteran at the FinTech space before we were even calling it FinTech, to hear a little bit more about how it's changed and what the future looks like from Dwolla.

Again, for those who may not know, Dwolla is a leader in account to account payments in the US.

Their approach replaces legacy payment technology with one unified solution. So think about bringing all payment methods, kind of under one roof and provider. What this does is it improves payment security and improves data visibility and payment flows and the overall customer experience of sending money from point A to point B.

With over 15 years operating in payments and over 500 business partners with do all to gain efficiency, flexibility and improved cash flow, they're one of the quiet leaders in the US payment space. They were doing this before it was cool. So Dave, thanks so much for joining us in the show today.

Dave Glaser, Dwolla  01:22

You're welcome. Nik, it's great to be here.