Dwolla-powered Koala Pay aims to help merchants, customers connect

Koala Pay, a mobile application launched last month, is out to help merchants cultivate a more loyal and engaged customer base, starting with users of web-based payments network Dwolla. Released in the App Store on Nov. 26 and officially unveiled at a Dwolla meetup Nov. 30 in Des Moines, Koala Pay was designed to provide…

Kaola Pay enables users to conduct location-based searches for participating merchants (left) and use Dwolla to purchase deals from those merchants (right).

Koala Pay, a mobile application launched last month, is out to help merchants cultivate a more loyal and engaged customer base, starting with users of web-based payments network Dwolla.

Released in the App Store on Nov. 26 and officially unveiled at a Dwolla meetup Nov. 30 in Des Moines, Koala Pay was designed to provide merchants a channel for marketing directly to customers and to give customers deals and discounts to their favorite merchants. 

“It’s a mobile app that allows merchants to create more loyal and engaged customers,” said Troy Miller, a North Liberty, Iowa-based entrepreneur who co-founded Koala Pay with Josh Cramer of Iowa City-based Cramer Dev. “Or, if you’re just a regular Joe out there, it’s the rewarding way to pay.”

Merchants create an account by visiting Koala Pay’s website and, if they have a Dwolla account, entering some basic information. They can then post deals through the app to reach existing or prospective customers. Merchants pay a monthly fee — the greater of $20 or 2.75 percent of the funds they take in through Koala Pay that month — to use the app.

“What we’re doing here is we’re trying to open up a direct marketing channel for merchants to their consumers, which is different than all the other payment options out there,” Cramer (right) said.

“We’re excited about helping merchants and businesses connect with their customers on deeper and more meaningful levels.” 

Those customers download Koala Pay for free. They then search businesses by location or name to find deals — say, a $10 gift card to a local coffee house for just $5 — from merchants that accept Dwolla.

Koala Pay was built using the Dwolla API, and for now Dwolla’s the only payment option supported by Koala Pay. “I think we’re open to whatever is the best way to pay,” Cramer said. “Right now, for us, that’s Dwolla.”

Miller, who along with his wife owns a meal-assembly service, Naomi’s Kitchen, and an ice cream parlor, Isaac’s Creamery, in the Iowa City suburb of North Liberty, conceived of the idea for Koala Pay based on his experiences running those businesses. He contacted Ben Milne, the co-founder and CEO of Des Moines-based Dwolla, about the project late last year, and Milne encouraged Miller to move forward with it.

Miller and Cramer discussed the idea and spent the early part of this year doing market research and customer discovery. By mid-year, Cramer and a small crew of Cramer Dev designers and developers had begun building the app.

“When I was looking at what Dwolla was, I really liked what I saw,” Miller (left) recalled of the inspiration for Koala Pay. “And at the same time I envisioned additional tools that would really benefit me as a merchant. And in conversations with Ben Milne at Dwolla and (with) other merchants, it became clear to me that this was a good opportunity to take what was already an excellent tool for merchants and take it several steps further.”

In a phone call Wednesday, Miller declined to discuss the number of merchants and customers currently using Koala Pay, but he did share news regarding an apparent effort to boost those numbers: Koala Pay announced Wednesday it has entered a territory sales agreement with Fusionfarm, a Cedar Rapids creative agency owned by Iowa SourceMedia Group. Under the agreement, Fusionfarm will handle Koala Pay’s merchant acquisition, customer acquisition and low-level customer support. 

“It’s a model where Koala Pay can focus on the product and also bring some really gifted sales and customer service people into the loop — people who have relationships that we don’t have, and people who really want to be prominent fixtures in the community,” Miller said. “When you have those kind of components, I think that can be a really powerful method to do this.”

Cramer and Miller say they’re taking a lean approach to building out Koala Pay but that future plans include an Android version of the app and new features like the ability for merchants to automate rewards for customers who hit certain thresholds and a “loyalty score” that looks at how often a makes purchases with Koala Pay and also factors in social sharing of those purchases.

 

Credits: Koala Pay screenshots from itunes.apple.com. Photo of Miller from facebook.com. Photo of Cramer courtesy of Cramer. 

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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