Dwolla has released a peer-to-peer payment platform, promising to offer very simple ways to exchange money. It allows users to send from $1 to $5,000 to their Facebook friends and Twitter followers, features notably absent from Paypal's services. This will be an interesting service to follow.
The fee model is enticing. All transactions cost a flat fee of 25 cents, charged by default to the recipient of the money. The sender can opt to pay the 25 cent fee if they choose. This fee structure is a result of Dwolla's payment processing partnership with The Members Group, who is an investor in Dwolla.
Dwolla accounts can be specified as personal, business or nonprofit, but as of yet there is no feature difference between these account types. Accounts are open to USA customers in the 50 states, no support yet for territories or international customers. There is no refund feature yet, other than convincing your payee to send the money back.
Privacy is managed through the standard TRUSTe Privacy Seal Program used by many payment vendors, and their Terms of Use appear on first read to be more straightforward than Paypal (although the devil is always in the details).
In addition to the Facebook and Twitter integrations, Dwolla also has an Android and iOS app for supporting mobile payments, and offers a SOAP API for developers to integrate this into shopping carts and other applications. Integrations with OS Commerce and other shopping cart software are expected to be released shortly as well.