Dwolla - The Inconvenient Alternative to Paypal

(Sometimes this blog veers from groceries to talk about how to pay for things. This is such a time.)

I was shopping for a cast iron skillet because I've wanted one for a while. My roommate recently moved out and took a lot of things, so I m in a buying mode. He owned a cast iron pan, but it had grill ridges on it, so I rarely used it. I used Google shopping to find a pan that was very cheap. I'm getting a 12" skillet for under $9. As soon as I paid, I realized this seller ONLY accept Dwolla, which I never heard of before. So I signed up, was annoyed for several days, and then tweeted this this morning.

I accidentally bought something online that requires me to pay with Dwolla. If you aren't familiar, Dwolla is the inconvenient Paypal.
— Mike Cherepko (@mikecherepko) April 9, 2013

To their credit, they emailed me to ask if something was wrong.

Dwolla Support
APR 09, 2013  |  11:36AM CDT
Mike,
Noticed your tweet that you were maybe having some issues with the Dwolla account. Any feedback you can provide us?
Sincerely,
Dwolla Support

And so I went to town.

Since you asked: 

You tout that you're the most secure payment network. I wrote that you are the inconvenient alternative to paypal. Those are two sides of the same coin. Dwolla made me make a password that is so secure I can barely remember it (though if I write it down, it becomes much less secure.) On top of remembering the password, I have to enter a PIN. The PIN gets away with only being 4 characters. I haven't used Dwolla enough to know if I will always have to enter a password and a PIN. If I do, that's just another level of inconvenience. If I don't, 4 digits seems markedly less secure than a password I can make up of whatever digits and numbers I want. 

This reminds me of the time I closed my ING account because their system was just too annoying to log into. 

I came to Dwolla against my will. I bought something online and only noticed after I agreed to purchase it that the seller only accept Dwolla. After verifying that you aren't a scam, I signed up. Then I found I had to link a bank account. Then I found I had to wait for deposit verifications. That took days. (I signed up Saturday. I finally got the deposits today.) I realize that financial institutions don't move very quickly over weekends. I just don't care about that because every other method of me paying this seller would have been faster. In between finding out I needed to enter the deposit verifications and them actually showing up, I received an email from Dwolla reminding me to verify my account. That added insult to injury because I was already checking 3-4 times a day. This morning when I finally did verify it, I was happy that I could finally add less than $9 to my account to pay for that item I bought Saturday. Now it will take 3-4 days before that money is available! Again, I understand that banks don't like to move money very quickly. And again, I don't care. This is so far just an extremely slow and extremely inconvenient alternative to Paypal or to emailing money to people directly from my bank, which I also do.
I do have suggestions to make Dwolla better. I'm not all complaints.

1. Loosen the password security. There's no reason Dwolla needs to be more secure than my accounts with PNC, Ally, Chase, Bank of America, American Express, Citi, Discover, Paypal, or Etrade. 

2. Speed up the time from sign-up to first payment. I don't know how to do this, but in a modern economy, it should not take a week to move $9.

I just noticed that they have a link to send someone free money on them to entice me to get people to sign up for Dwolla. I'm not going to do that. I think you should run away from Dwolla. But I'm also annoyed that if they will just give people free money, why can't they front me $9 while they're making me do all the stupid verifications?

Update: Dwolla just did give me $9. I feel bad for their customer service people who seem good at what they do because they still have to back up an annoying product.