On Thursday, payment processing firm Dwolla announced that it has entered a partnership agreement with Fiverr, an online service marketplace with a goal to increase the payment option the former offers.
Dwolla also is offering a special promotion for the first 10,000 US-based customers. The first few thousand will be able to get USD5 each for free. Others who were not able to avail the USD5 freebie will get 20% of their transactions. Another incentive for customers in the US is that Dwolla will be offering one gig free for every nine transactions paid on Fiverr using the currency.
Dwolla is an e-commerce company which has its own online payment system and mobile payments network. The company was launched in 2009 after raising USD1.3 million in funding. Dwolla is also popular among Bitcoin fans, as the company provides a way for enthusiasts to make Bitcoin purchases through dollars transferred to virtual currency exchanges via Dwolla. Despite crediting a sharp growth due to the Bitcoin, representatives of Dwolla said the company is not offering any official endorsement of the Bitcoin.
The online payment processing firm's strategic partnership with Fiverr highlighted the benefit of Dwolla in a certain type of transaction, which is a micro-transaction. Moreover, Fiverr's adoption of Dwolla as an alternative payment have broken the monopoly of Paypal in online marketplaces.
VentureBeat noted that Dwolla's deal with Fiverr is one of the latest it had engaged with recently. In January, Dwolla signed a strategic partnership with the state of Iowa that will allow taxpayers to pay their dues with the Iowa Department of Revenue via an alternative payment option. According to Dwolla communications director Jordan Lampe in a company blog post, Dwolla's partnership with the state of Iowa will result to the former processing an initial projected USD130 million yearly.
Union Square Ventures's Fred Wilson, whose company is one of Dwolla's backers, said about the partnership, "If you are looking to help startups get going in your region, one way is to become a customer of theirs and help them demonstrate the power of their technology to others," Wilson said on his blog. "It's great to see the State of Iowa do that with Dwolla."
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