Transfer Money Me-to-Me - Dwolla Developer Portal

Overview

This guide is designed to get you up and running quickly through creating a bank to bank transfer between a verified Customer’s two bank accounts. In this guide we’ll cover the basics of integrating this payment flow by walking through the steps needed to onboard your end user as a verified Customer and create the bank to bank transfer.

In this quickstart guide, you’ll learn the key concepts involved with sending money between a Customer’s bank accounts.

Choose a Customer type and create a verified Customer record
Select the appropriate Customer type and create a verified Customer in your application.
Attach a source and destination funding source to the Customer record
Link both a source and a destination bank account to the Customer’s profile for account-to-account transfers.
Fetch the available funding sources
Retrieve the list of all funding sources associated with the Customer.
Send funds from the Customer's checking account to the Customer's savings account
Initiate a transfer from the Customer’s checking account to their savings account using the Dwolla API.

Before you begin

We encourage you to create a Sandbox account, if you haven’t already. This will allow you to follow along with the steps outlined in this guide. Check out our Sandbox guide to learn more.

After creating a sandbox account, you’ll obtain your API Key and Secret, which are used to obtain an OAuth access token. An access token is required in order to authenticate against the Dwolla API. If you haven’t already, run through the Quickstart to get your first token, or see the Authentication guide for OAuth details. Lastly, in this sandbox walkthrough, we recommend having an active webhook subscription. This will help notify your application of various events that occur within Dwolla. Check out our guide to learn more. Let’s get started!

Step 1 - Creating your Customer

Choose the Customer Type for Your Funds Flow

Before your end user can send or receive funds to their connected bank account, they must be created as a Customer via the Dwolla API. With this funds flow, however, the only eligible Customer types are:

Verified Personal Customers
Verified Business Customers

To learn more on the differences between personal and business verified Customers and the capabilities of each, check out our developer resource article.

Verified Customers must go through the identity verification process and have a verified status in order to be eligible to transact. In order to verify the identity of the individual or business creating a Dwolla Customer account, you will need to pass information including, but not limited to, social security number (SSN), address, date of birth, and/or Employer Identification Number (EIN).

Create the Customer

While both the Personal and Business verified Customer types are valid in this funds flow, we will be creating a Personal verified Customer in this guide.

Request Parameters - Personal Verified Customer

Parameter	Required	Type	Description
firstName	yes	string	Individual’s legal first name.
lastName	yes	string	Individual’s legal last name.
email	yes	string	Customer’s email address.
type	yes	string	Type of identity verified Customer. Value of `personal` for individual.
address1	yes	string	Street number, street name of individual’s physical address.
address2	no	string	Apartment, floor, suite, bldg # of individual’s physical address.
city	yes	string	City of individual’s physical address.
state	yes	string	Two-letter US state or territory abbreviation code of individual’s physical address.
postalCode	yes	string	Customer’s US five-digit ZIP or ZIP + 4 code.
dateOfBirth	yes	string	Customer’s date of birth. Must be 18 years of age with format of `YYYY-MM-DD`.
ssn	yes	string	Last four-digits of individual’s social security number.

Request and response

POST https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers
Content-Type: application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json
Accept: application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json
Authorization: Bearer pBA9fVDBEyYZCEsLf/wKehyh1RTpzjUj5KzIRfDi0wKTii7DqY

{
  "firstName": "John",
  "lastName": "Doe",
  "email": "johndoe@nomail.net",
  "ipAddress": "10.10.10.10",
  "type": "personal",
  "address1": "99-99 33rd St",
  "city": "Some City",
  "state": "NY",
  "postalCode": "11101",
  "dateOfBirth": "1970-01-01",
  "ssn": "1234"
}

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Location: https://api.dwolla.com/customers/FC451A7A-AE30-4404-AB95-E3553FCD733F

<?php
$customersApi = new DwollaSwagger\CustomersApi($apiClient);

$customer = $customersApi->create([
  'firstName' => 'John',
  'lastName' => 'Doe',
  'email' => 'jdoe@nomail.net',
  'type' => 'personal',
  'address1' => '99-99 33rd St',
  'city' => 'Some City',
  'state' => 'NY',
  'postalCode' => '11101',
  'dateOfBirth' => '1970-01-01',

# For the first attempt, only the
  # last 4 digits of SSN required

# If the entire SSN is provided,
  # it will still be accepted
  'ssn' => '1234'
]);

$customer; # => "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/AB443D36-3757-44C1-A1B4-29727FB3111C"
?>

# Using dwollav2 - https://github.com/Dwolla/dwolla-v2-python
request_body = {
  'firstName': 'John',
  'lastName': 'Doe',
  'email': 'jdoe@nomail.net',
  'type': 'personal',
  'address1': '99-99 33rd St',
  'city': 'Some City',
  'state': 'NY',
  'postalCode': '11101',
  'dateOfBirth': '1970-01-01',
  # For the first attempt, only the
  # last 4 digits of SSN required
  # If the entire SSN is provided,
  # it will still be accepted
  'ssn': '1234'
}

customer = app_token.post('customers', request_body)
customer.headers['location'] # => 'https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/AB443D36-3757-44C1-A1B4-29727FB3111C'

When the Customer is successfully created on your application, you will receive a 201 HTTP response with an empty response body. You can reference the Location header to retrieve a link that represents the created Customer resource. We recommend storing the full URL for future use, as it will be needed for actions such as attaching a bank or correlating webhooks that are triggered for the user in the Dwolla system.

Handle Webhooks

If you have an active webhook subscription, you will receive the customer_created and customer_verified webhook immediately after the resource has been created.

Additional expected behavior

Customer Statuses

Not all Customers will have a verified status upon initial Customer creation. In production, you may run into an instance where more information is needed from your end user in order for Dwolla to fully verify their identity. Other statuses your Customer may be placed in include, retry, document, deactivated, or suspended. For more information on these statuses, refer to our developer resource article.

Balance Funding Source

On successful Customer verification, Dwolla will also create a Balance Funding Source for this Customer.

There are two types of Funding Sources available within the Dwolla Platform which include a bank or a balance. A bank account is commonly used as the source or destination for ACH transfers. A balance is a Funding Source that can be utilized like a “wallet” for holding a stored value of funds. The Dwolla balance is made available for Customers that have fully verified their identity within Dwolla.

Step 2 - Adding Funding Sources

Within Dwolla, the sending party must always verify their bank account in order to be eligible to create a transfer.

Bank Addition and Verification Methods

There are multiple ways of adding a bank to a Customer with the Dwolla API. A simplified table below outlines the similarities and differences of each method.

Bank Addition Method	Will the bank be verified?	Required Information
API - Account & Routing Number	Optional - With Microdeposits	Bank Account and Routing Number
Dwolla + Open Banking	Yes	Online banking credentials
Drop-in components	Optional - With Microdeposits	Bank Account and Routing Number
Dwolla + Secure Exchange solution	Yes	Online banking credentials
Other Approved Third-party Provider	Yes	Variable

For more information on securely submitting a user’s bank details directly to Dwolla from the client-side of your application, reference our Drop-in components.

Add a Bank to a Verified Personal Customer

In this step, we will create and attach a verified funding source to your Customer using Dwolla’s Open Banking solution with Plaid, a leading Open Banking service provider that Dwolla partners with. This method will give your Customers the ability to add and verify their bank account in a matter of seconds by authenticating using their online banking credentials. Once your Customer reaches the page in your application to add a bank account, you will use Open Banking with Plaid to authenticate the user’s bank account. This involves initiating an Exchange Session with Dwolla, guiding the user through the verification process with their bank, and then using the Exchange details to create a funding source in Dwolla. To integrate Open Banking with Plaid, we recommend checking out our integration guide. Additionally, if you would like to see a working example that verifies a bank using Open Banking with Plaid and attaches it as a verified funding source to a Dwolla Customer, please check out our open-banking/plaid integration example on our GitHub profile.

Step-by-step guide on implementing Open Banking with Plaid

Handle Webhooks

If you have an active webhook subscription, you should receive both the customer_funding_source_added and customer_funding_source_verified webhooks immediately following the request to Dwolla to add a funding source using Open Banking.

Add a Savings Account

Once you have implemented Dwolla’s Open Banking solution with Plaid, and you have attached a customer’s checking account, you will want to repeat the same steps outlined above to add the customer’s savings account as a funding source as well.

Step 3 - Retrieve Funding Sources

In order to find your Customer’s available bank and balance funding sources, you will need to first retrieve the funding sources from your Customer, via the API.

Request and response

GET https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/5b29279d-6359-4c87-a318-e09095532733/funding-sources
Accept: application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json
Authorization: Bearer pBA9fVDBEyYZCEsLf/wKehyh1RTpzjUj5KzIRfDi0wKTii7DqY

{
  "_links": {
    "self": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/5b29279d-6359-4c87-a318-e09095532733/funding-sources"
    },
    "customer": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/5b29279d-6359-4c87-a318-e09095532733"
    }
  },
  "_embedded": {
    "funding-sources": [
      {
        "_links": {
          "self": {
            "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/ab9cd5de-9435-47af-96fb-8d2fa5db51e8"
          },
          "customer": {
            "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/5b29279d-6359-4c87-a318-e09095532733"
          },
          "with-available-balance": {
            "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/ab9cd5de-9435-47af-96fb-8d2fa5db51e8"
          }
        },
        "id": "ab9cd5de-9435-47af-96fb-8d2fa5db51e8",
        "status": "verified",
        "type": "balance",
        "name": "Balance",
        "created": "2015-10-02T21:00:28.153Z",
        "removed": false,
        "channels": []
      },
      {
        "_links": {
          "self": {
            "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/98c209d3-02d6-4bee-bc0f-61e18acf0e33"
          },
          "customer": {
            "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/5b29279d-6359-4c87-a318-e09095532733"
          }
        },
        "id": "98c209d3-02d6-4bee-bc0f-61e18acf0e33",
        "status": "verified",
        "type": "bank",
        "bankAccountType": "checking",
        "name": "Jane Doe's Checking",
        "created": "2015-10-02T22:03:45.537Z",
        "removed": false,
        "channels": [
            "ach"
        ],
        "fingerprint": "4cf31392f678cb26c62b75096e1a09d4465a801798b3d5c3729de44a4f54c794"
      },
      {
        "_links": {
          "self": {
            "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/32eb2e53-d1e8-4b4d-bfc7-9ae7c553969d"
          },
          "customer": {
            "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/5b29279d-6359-4c87-a318-e09095532733"
          }
        },
        "id": "98c209d3-02d6-4bee-bc0f-61e18acf0e33",
        "status": "verified",
        "type": "bank",
        "bankAccountType": "savings",
        "name": "Jane Doe's Savings",
        "created": "2015-10-02T22:03:45.537Z",
        "removed": false,
        "channels": [
            "ach"
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
}

When the funding sources are successfully retrieved, you will receive a 200 HTTP response with the details of the funding sources. After retrieving the funding sources, we recommend storing the full URL for future use as it will be referenced when creating the transfer to this user’s bank account.

Step 4 - Initiating a Transfer

Sending funds from the Customer’s checking account to their savings account.

Identify Source and Destination For Transfer

The first step is to determine where the funds are being sourced from and where the funds are going to.

Source - Your Customer’s Checking Bank Funding Source
Destination - Your Customer’s Savings Bank Funding Source

Since you are utilizing a me-to-me funds flow, you will need to know that there are two parts to a transfer,

Source funding source to Balance funding source
Balance funding source to Destination funding source

Initiate a Transfer

To initiate a transfer, we will need to specify the source and destination funding source URLs in the _links parameter.

Request Parameters

Parameter	Required	Type	Description
_links	yes	object	A _links JSON object describing the desired source and destination of a transfer. Reference the Source and Destination object to learn more about possible values for source and destination.
amount	yes	object	An amount JSON object. Reference the amount JSON object to learn more.

Within a transfer request, Dwolla supports additional optional parameters. These can range from clearing to specify the processing timing for the transfer, or correlationId to help correlate transfers from end-to-end. The object facilitator-fee isn’t supported for this funds flow. For more information on all available transfer request parameters, check out our API reference documentation.

Request and response

POST https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/transfers
Accept: application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json
Content-Type: application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json
Authorization: Bearer pBA9fVDBEyYZCEsLf/wKehyh1RTpzjUj5KzIRfDi0wKTii7DqY
Idempotency-Key: 19051a62-3403-11e6-ac61-9e71128cae77

{
   "_links": {
       "source": {
           "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/707177c3-bf15-4e7e-b37c-55c3898d9bf4"
       },
       "destination": {
           "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/3152c22b-3d72-442d-a83b-e575df3a043e"
       }
   },
   "amount": {
       "currency": "USD",
       "value": "10.00"
    },
}

HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Location: https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/transfers/81643da1-b1b3-e911-811b-f08aa77f5aa3

Handle Webhooks

If you have an active webhook subscription (required in production & optional in Sandbox), you will receive the customer_bank_transfer_created webhook immediately after the transfer resource has been created. This denotes that the first part of the transfer has been initiated from the checking bank funding source to the Balance funding source.

Simulate Bank Transfer Processing

To simulate bank transfer processing in the Dwolla Sandbox environment, navigate to the Sandbox Dashboard. From here, you will want to click the “Process Bank Transfers” button on the top of the screen.

Production bank transfer processing timing While pending bank transfers can be processed at any time in the Sandbox, behavior will vary in production depending on if your application has access to expedited transfers versus standard ACH transfer times. Refer to our developer resource article to learn more on transfer timing in production.

Verify Status of Transfer

Since ACH transfers in production can take a few days to complete, webhooks are an efficient way to notify you of when a transfer’s status has been updated from pending to processed to a destination funding source. However, if you want to verify the status of a transfer at any given point in time, you can make a call to the API to retrieve the transfer by its unique id.

Example response - Transfer 1

{
  "_links": {
    "self": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/transfers/81643da1-b1b3-e911-811b-f08aa77f5aa3",
      "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
      "resource-type": "transfer"
    },
    "source": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/707177c3-bf15-4e7e-b37c-55c3898d9bf4",
      "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
      "resource-type": "funding-source"
    },
    "destination": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/cf3f1ad4-fc48-45d3-8aff-0ef5577b8a17",
      "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
      "resource-type": "customer"
    },
    "funded-transfer": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/transfers/a00ff82d-73b4-e911-811b-f08aa77f5aa3",
      "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
      "resource-type": "transfer"
    }
  },
  "id": "81643da1-b1b3-e911-811b-f08aa77f5aa3",
  "created": "2019-08-01T15:32:05.620Z",
  "status": "processed",
  "amount": {
    "value": "225.00",
    "currency": "USD"
  },
  "individualAchId": "IQ8M922R"
}

Example response - Transfer 2

{
  "_links": {
    "self": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/transfers/a00ff82d-73b4-e911-811b-f08aa77f5aa3",
      "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
      "resource-type": "transfer"
    },
    "source": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/cf3f1ad4-fc48-45d3-8aff-0ef5577b8a17",
      "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
      "resource-type": "customer"
    },
    "destination": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/3152c22b-3d72-442d-a83b-e575df3a043e",
      "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
      "resource-type": "funding-source"
    },
    "funding-transfer": {
      "href": "https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/transfers/81643da1-b1b3-e911-811b-f08aa77f5aa3",
      "type": "application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json",
      "resource-type": "transfer"
    }
  },
  "id": "a00ff82d-73b4-e911-811b-f08aa77f5aa3",
  "created": "2019-08-01T15:44:06.290Z",
  "status": "processed",
  "amount": {
    "value": "225.00",
    "currency": "USD"
  },
  "individualAchId": "IQKBPJAY"
}