At 40MM/month, with average transaction of $500, and a $0.25 fee for each transaction, they make $20,000 per month revenue... After you pay employees (12 people), other costs (including legal), and take a hit from fraud, I can't imagine there is a great upside to this business unless they start doing at least 100x more volume. Concidering the nature of the business, I don't see this happening.
Consumers arn't getting rid of their credit cards any time soon. Why would they? They get 1) credit, 2) get to dispute anything they want off the bill, 3) don't pay any type of fee.
And the merchants don't drive payment options ... they simply accept what consumers provide.
Also, IMO, the moment fraudsters target Dwolla, is the moment Dwolla realizes that a 2-7% transaction fee is necessary to stay in business.
Costumers don't pay fees for having a CC. They pay fees because CCs exist, regardless of whether they have one or not. Which means using Dwolla or a CC is irrelevant in that regard.
Many PoS merchants also now charge surcharges for using cards. (which I admit for a merchant only makes financial sense if you underreport cash on your taxes--otherwise it seems the costs of handling cash coupled with lack of reporting is drastically more than the interchange).
Using my awesome math skills, it would take 4 million transactions/year to break $1MM in revenue. Or roughly 11K/day, 460/hour. That's easy, if they can grow their user base.
Being disruptive doesn't matter at all if you cannot remain solvent so looking at those numbers, they have got to be whXXXng themselves out to their investors.
