Dwolla provides a modern and API-based fintech platform that allows businesses to streamline, automate, and customize their account-to-account (A2A) payment processes, including ACH, Same Day ACH, and real-time bank transfers. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Dwolla CTO Skyler Nesheim to learn more.
Skyler Nesheim’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Nesheim said:
“My journey at Dwolla began over 13 years ago as a software engineer, and it’s been shaped by a fundamental curiosity about solving complex problems with technology. I started my career in the enterprise world, building software for insurance companies, but I kept running into the same challenge: how do you maintain that drive for continuous improvement amid multi-stage risk governance and legacy stacks?
When I discovered Dwolla was right here in Des Moines, it felt like finding the perfect opportunity in my backyard. Here was a company tackling an untapped area in payments that was ripe for innovation. So, I made what felt like a crazy decision at the time and left the stability of enterprise work to join a startup.
What I’ve learned over the past decade is that leadership isn’t about having all the answers, but about asking good questions. Questions like, ‘What problem are we trying to solve?’ and ‘What’s the smallest step we can take?’ These questions have guided both my personal growth from engineer to CTO and how we approach building solutions at Dwolla.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Nesheim reflected:
“Some of my favorite moments are when we launch with a customer and I get to use their product myself. There’s something uniquely rewarding about seeing the technology we’ve built powering real businesses and then experiencing that impact directly. It creates a full-circle moment where we’re helping them succeed and we get to live what our platform makes possible. Those experiences really drive home why we do what we do.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Nesheim explained:
“Dwolla provides software for comprehensive account-to-account (A2A) payments that serves as the infrastructure layer for businesses looking to modernize their payment operations. Our core offering centers around three key capabilities:
Our API-first platform enables businesses to integrate multiple payment rails—ACH, RTP, and now the FedNow Service—through a single integration point. This eliminates the complexity of managing multiple vendor relationships and different technical implementations.
We’ve also built intelligent orchestration technology that automatically determines the optimal payment rail based on factors like speed requirements, cost optimization, and network availability. Instead of forcing businesses into one-size-fits-all solutions, our platform makes smart routing decisions in real time.
Additionally, our platform includes essential supporting features like fraud-risk control, seamless integration, real-time capabilities, and automation tools that enterprises need for secure, scalable payment operations. We also provide comprehensive developer tools and documentation to streamline implementation.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Nesheim acknowledged:
“The biggest challenge and opportunity in payments right now is the pace of change. New rails like FedNow, RTP, new customer expectations around real-time payments, and emerging technologies like generative AI and stablecoins are all hitting at once. It’s no longer enough to simply keep up. Instead, organizations should embrace this change of pace and think deeply about how to apply it to real problems.
At Dwolla, we’ve leaned into that by creating space to experiment with new technologies while keeping a clear focus on the problems we’re solving for our customers. With GenAI, for example, we’re asking how it can improve compliance processes, automate operations, or make our orchestration layer smarter. We’re turning what could feel like chaos into an advantage by embracing the speed of change while grounding it in customer value.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Nesheim noted:
“The evolution has been driven by a core principle: taking complexity away from our clients while expanding what’s possible with payments. Early on, we focused on making ACH payments more accessible through APIs but we recognized businesses needed more than just basic money movement. They need a flexible, modern platform that can help them move money quickly, streamline their operations, and adapt to their specific requirements to gain a competitive advantage in their industry.
One major shift that addresses these concerns is the recent addition of the FedNow Service access alongside our existing RTP capabilities. This nearly doubles the reach of instant payments for our clients. Along with adding another rail, it increases coverage, improves cash flow and customer satisfaction, and maximizes success rates for real-time transactions.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Nesheim cited:
“From a technology perspective, achieving intelligent orchestration across multiple payment rails represents one of our most significant architectural milestones. This capability fundamentally changes how businesses can approach payment strategy, moving from rigid, single-rail implementations to flexible, optimized routing.
On the business side, we’ve collaborated with incredible partners of all sizes—from household names like Visa, MX, Mastercard and Plaid to leading enterprises and smaller businesses. And throughout the years, we’ve helped clients achieve remarkable operational improvements, including reductions in payment processing costs, noticeable improvements in payment efficiencies, and significant reductions in manual intervention requirements.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Nesheim highlighted:
“We’ve had the privilege of working with clients across diverse industries who faced unique payment challenges, and their success stories really demonstrate the power of a flexible, modern payment infrastructure.
The Florida Education Association faced a crisis when state legislation prohibited payroll deductions for union dues collection. They needed to rapidly implement a new system for over 120,000 educators across more than 100 local unions. Through our API, they scaled from zero to 180,000 monthly transactions in just six months. What made this particularly challenging was accommodating over 80 unique school system payment schedules while also creating a system that mimicked their previous payroll deduction process to minimize disruption for members.
In real estate, we’re working with a platform that has processed more than 120,000 earnest money deposits totaling $700 million—with zero instances of fraud. This is significant when you consider that 1 in 3 real estate transactions is subject to fraud attempts. By leveraging ACH through our platform instead of traditional wire transfers, they created what the industry calls ‘good funds,’ or secure, trackable, and cost-effective transactions that eliminate the common fraud vectors in real estate deals.
We also worked with a pet insurance company that achieved 92% cost savings while improving reimbursement efficiencies by over 800%. They went from spending nearly four hours each day on manual ACH processing to an automated system that gets reimbursements to policyholders five days faster. Since 2018, they’ve paid out more than $126 million in claims through our platform.
These stories show businesses are facing operational constraints that require technology solutions and fundamental workflow transformations. By working with us, these companies could focus on their core missions instead of wrestling with payment complexity.”
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Nesheim assessed:
“The U.S. account-to-account payments market is enormous. The ACH Network alone moved more than $86 trillion in 2024 across more than 33 billion transactions. Importantly, a large amount of that dollar volume comes from non-retail, business-to-business payments, which is exactly where modernization and orchestration can deliver the greatest impact.
And the opportunity is accelerating, research suggests more than 80% of U.S. businesses will adopt fintech payment systems in some form by 2026. Even more are upgrading or modernizing legacy systems to leverage open banking services. For Dwolla, the TAM isn’t limited to payments moving faster because we also enable enterprises to rethink their payment operations altogether.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Nesheim affirmed:
“Our differentiation comes down to how we approach the whole payment experience rather than just money movement. We built our platform to be rail-agnostic, so we can route payments through whatever makes the most sense for each transaction.
Our intelligent orchestration technology exemplifies this approach. When a client needs to send payments, our system automatically checks eligibility across multiple rails and routes them through the most efficient option. If a receiving bank supports both RTP and FedNow, we provide redundancy options. If instant payment isn’t available, we can seamlessly fall back to same-day ACH.
We also focus on serving both the exciting startup fintech world and businesses of all kinds that are ready to modernize their payment systems. This means building enterprise-grade security, compliance, and scalability into everything we do.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Nesheim emphasized:
“Our roadmap focuses on future-proofing the pay-by-bank experience for enterprises. We’re heavily investing in AI and automation capabilities across our products, features, and upgrades to make payment operations even more intelligent and self-managing. Imagine a platform that orchestrates payments efficiently and provides insights on how to optimize your entire payment strategy based on your specific patterns and business needs. That’s what modern enterprises need to succeed.”
FedNow
Can you tell me more about the FedNow capabilities and how does that fit into your broader real-time payments strategy? Nesheim described:
“FedNow represents a critical piece of our multi-rail orchestration strategy. As businesses continue to implement instant payment systems, access to comprehensive real-time payment networks is essential for competitiveness.
By supporting both FedNow and RTP through intelligent routing, we’re solving two fundamental challenges for businesses. First, we’re maximizing reach: FedNow’s network of over 1,400 participating financial institutions significantly expands who you can pay instantly. Second, we’re providing redundancy and reliability: if one network experiences issues, payments can be automatically routed through the alternative.
While having access to multiple networks is valuable, having a platform that makes the complexity invisible is the key. Our clients don’t need to understand the technical differences between RTP and FedNow, they just need payments that reach their intended recipients quickly and reliably.”
Intelligent Payment Orchestration
How is Dwolla approaching intelligent payment orchestration, and what impact does that have on enterprise scalability? Nesheim pointed out:
“Intelligent orchestration is fundamentally about replacing manual decision-making with automated optimization. Instead of enterprises having to manage multiple vendor relationships and make routing decisions for each payment, our platform handles that complexity automatically.
From a scalability perspective, this architectural approach is designed to reduce the traditional bottlenecks that constrain payment operations. For instance, enterprises may be able to process significantly higher volumes without proportionally increasing operational overhead.”
Helping Financial Institutions Navigate Open Banking
In what ways is Dwolla helping financial institutions and fintechs navigate the shift toward open banking and API-driven infrastructures? Nesheim clarified:
“We’re seeing financial institutions realize API-first infrastructure goes beyond technical modernization. It can help enable new business models and improve customer experiences. Our platform serves as a bridge, allowing institutions to offer modern payment capabilities without rebuilding their core payment systems.
For fintechs, we’re enabling rapid innovation by providing enterprise-grade payment infrastructure through simple API integrations. , Now they can focus on their core value proposition instead of spending months building payment infrastructure.
Our approach emphasizes education and implementation support alongside technology. Many enterprises need help understanding how to modernize their technology, workflows, and operations to support real-time, always-on payment processing.”
Sharing How Automation Is Driving Value
Can you share how automation in your platform is driving measurable value for lending or real estate clients? Nesheim conveyed:
“In lending, we’ve worked with innovative fintech companies like Extra that are revolutionizing credit building through automated payment flows. Extra created a debit card that functions like a credit card to help users build credit without accumulating debt. The key to their model is speed—credit purchases need to be settled within a day or two rather than the traditional weeks-long process to enable rapid credit reporting.
When a user swipes their Extra debit card, our platform automatically handles the complex money movement between their bank account, Extra’s line of credit system, and the settlement process that enables credit bureau reporting. This automation eliminates manual intervention in what would otherwise be a complex, multi-step financial workflow.
In real estate, we’ve helped clients scale their payment operations while significantly reducing manual processing requirements. The automation enables them to handle high-volume, time-sensitive transactions like earnest money deposits and commission disbursements without proportionally increasing operational overhead.
When you automate payment routing decisions, you reduce human error while supporting optimal cost and speed outcomes for each transaction.”
Intersection Of Data, Intelligence And Payments
As AI continues to converge with financial services, how is Dwolla thinking about the intersection of data, intelligence, and payments? Nesheim concluded:
“We’re deploying AI tools across our entire operation, from fraud detection and payment routing optimization to helping our clients optimize their payment strategies in real time. The goal is to make individual transactions smarter while also making the entire payment operation more intelligent.
Real-time payments operate via modern protocols and allow for more data to be attached to each payment, providing valuable insights for strategic decision-making. As AI technologies advance, they will further accelerate orchestration adoption, facilitating real-time decision-making, intelligent routing, and advanced fraud detection.
Looking ahead, AI will power payment infrastructure that continuously learns and improves without requiring manual intervention, and we’ll continue guiding our clients across these changes.”
