Recently in Dwolla Category

Earlier this month, payment network Dwolla announced that it raised $5 million in Series B funding from Union Square Ventures. In addition, Village Ventures, Thrive Capital, Artists & Instigators  and angel investor Paige Craig also participated in the round.

Silicon Prairie News reports:

"With the new funds, which bring Dwolla's total amount raised to date to around $6.3 million, the company plans to bolster its product development and support and aggressively expand its API offerings..."

• Users grew 25x
• Merchants grew 37x
• Millions have been saved in fees
• 16 jobs were added to the Des Moines economy

To learn more about Dwolla, watch its FinovateSpring 2011 demo.

Fast Company recently published a list of most innovative companies that contained multiple Finovate alumni. Here's the breakdown:

Overall top 50 most innovative companies:

Google
Rank: 3
FinovateFall 2011 demo

PayPal
Rank: 43
FinovateSpring 2011 demo

Top 10* in finance category:

PayPal
Rank: 4
FinovateSpring 2011 demo

SecondMarket
Rank: 6
FinovateStarup09 demo

Dwolla
Rank: 8
FinovateSpring 2011 demo

Simple (formerly BankSimple)
Rank: 9
FinovateFall 2011 demo

StockTwits
Rank: 10
FinovateEurope 2011 demo

Dwolla, a Des Moines-based payments network, launched a new feature today called Instant. By avoiding the electronic funds transfer process that usually takes 2-3 days, the new feature gives Dwolla's 70,000+ users immediate access to cash:

"Instant is a new opt-in feature that provides you access to cash immediately. When you turn the feature on, you can deposit and send cash without the wait or delay users typically bump into with Dwolla. Whether you're in a combine, on the streets of New York, walking down the Embarcadero in San Francisco, or stopping in at Mars Café in Des Moines, if you have access to the Internet, you have cash."

When users want to use Instant to make a purchase from the 4,000+ merchants in Dwolla's network, they have two options of funding sources. They can either link to a bank account or borrow money from Dwolla and pay it back at the end of the statement period. If the user chooses the latter option, there is a $500 limit.

The pricing structure is simple. Here's how it works:

• $3/ month participation fee. This can be turned on and off at any time.
• $5 late fee if the user has not paid his Instant balance by the end of the statement date

Mobile payment startup Dwolla announced today that it will no longer charge a 25-cent fee for transactions under $10.

Dwolla assures its clients that there will be no changes to the product or service and that merchants will receive the same benefits.

On a separate note, Dwolla is celebrating its one-year anniversary of its national rollout today.

To learn more about Dwolla, watch its FinovateSpring 2011 demo. 

"The new tech will allow users to convert their Dwolla enabled devices into movable Spots to seamlessly take payments without additional hardware, like NFC or dongles."