In a Dwolla promotional video, a user shows off how to use Spots. Screenshot from Dwolla on YouTube.
The new feature Dwolla unveiled at its March 2 meetup — an event from which we streamed video — is now available in the latest version release in the iPhone App Store. Dwolla, a Des Moines-based cash transfer startup, went live today with Spots, a geolocation feature that enables users to find vendors that accept Dwolla.
With Spots going live, Dwolla CEO Ben Milne outlined in a blog post a number of the capabilities that the Dwolla app now offers its users:
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- Send money to friends they are connected to through Facebook and Twitter
- Search their contacts by typing their name
- See merchants around them that accept Dwolla
- Walk in and pay with participating merchants, all with their cell phone
- Share their purchases and help promote the locations they care about via Twitter and Facebook
Dwolla illustrates Spots’ capabilities in this video:
Also promised as part of today’s announcement were updates to Dwolla’s mobile apps for Android and Windows 7 phones.
But upgraded mobile apps are not all that Dwolla has on the horizon, as we recently learned. After the March 2 meetup, our Danny Schreiber caught up with Shane Neuerburg, Dwolla’s co-founder and CTO, to discuss Spots and hear about what’s ahead for Dwolla in terms of integration with its banking partners. The following video contains excerpts from that conversation.