Dwolla Joins Microsoft For Government Payments Pitch

Payments startup Dwolla is getting in on the ground floor with Microsoft’s government-by-cloud initiative, the company said in a blog post.

This week Microsoft announced “Microsoft Azure Government,” a pitch to U.S. government agencies to switch to the software giant’s cloud-computing systems for their operations. Dwolla is currently the only payment partner for the Microsoft offering, the company said.

As part of the Microsoft deal, Dwolla would get a foot in the door as a preferred option for modernizing government payments, particularly by using Dwolla’s bank transfers to cut payment-card processing fees, along with online payments and turnkey checkout solutions.

Dwolla, which currently lists state and city agencies including the Iowa Department of Revenue and DMV and the Chicago suburb of Evanston among its government customers (and some not-yet-announced federal agencies, according to the company), also said those existing customers would be able to shift to the Azure servers without additional cost.