Proxi puts power of proximity-based payment at Dwolla users’ fingertips

Dwolla today announced a private beta of a new iOS platform, called Proxi. The new technology from the Des Moines-based startup will allow users to convert their Dwolla-enabled devices (iOS for now, with Android and Windows Phone soon to follow) into movable Spots, seamlessly making and taking payments without additional hardware like NFC or dongles,…

Proxi enables Dwolla users to customize their visibility settings (left) and locate other accesible Dwolla users within range (right). Screenshots courtesy of Dwolla.

Dwolla today announced a private beta of a new iOS platform, called Proxi. The new technology from the Des Moines-based startup will allow users to convert their Dwolla-enabled devices (iOS for now, with Android and Windows Phone soon to follow) into movable Spots, seamlessly making and taking payments without additional hardware like NFC or dongles, which are prerequisites of other mobile payment systems. Dwolla’s new feature uses GPS technology to give users a real-time list of the nearest Dwolla users and merchants who also have enabled Proxi.

Proxi takes Dwolla’s Spots technology, which the company unveiled at a meetup in March, another step. It’s an innovation based on the belief that Dwolla users should be able to pay anyone — or anything — even if the only common denominator is location.

“We continue to look at relationships that drive our payment network and we believe as strongly as you do there are more to payments than just a transaction,” Dwolla CEO Ben Milne said in a post today on Dwolla’s blog. “Proxi is built on this very relationship. We should all be able to pay one another for whatever we want, based on the proximity we share to one another.”

Users opt-in to Proxi and can customize who can see their spot, the distance from which their spot can be seen and the time for which their spot is visible. Jordan Lampe, Dwolla’s director of communications, said that Proxi should open up all kinds of new payment opportunities for users.

“The new technology will serve as the foundation for a lot enterprise implementations,” Lampe said in an email, citing examples like a gas pump recognizing a Dwolla users’ presence or a taxi accepting Dwolla. “It’s a movement away from looking at mobile payments as hardware/installation solution and more towards a software download solution.”

We’ll have more on Proxi after tonight’s Dwolla meetup, which you can catch streaming live at 6 p.m. For additional coverage of Proxi, see the stories from other outlets below and check Dwolla’s video introducing Proxi to the world:

Video from Dwolla on YouTube

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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