[Dwolla] won’t release its number of users, but it is on pace for $1 million in transactions this month.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20110220/BUSINESS/102200326/Banks-merchants-argue-over-fee-cap-transactionsJust for reference, Bitcoin is possibly already doing that level of transactions, or more,
every week. (e.g., in the past 24 hours, according to
http://BitcoinWatch.com there were 232,669 BTCs transferred in 1,861 transactions. At current exchange rates that number of BTCs for the day represents nearly $200K USD. Bitcoin's method of creating "change transactions" makes calculating the true amount of bitcoins transferred difficult to estimate however the day-over-day increases are showing that Bitcoin is truly gaining traction.
The article had some other items of interest:
"It's a debate on the benefits of electronic payments and who should bear the cost of those," Sorensen said. "Our view is that the retailers benefit greatly from the investments that the banking industry has made to the payment system."
Yes, it would be a shame if something should happen where you could no longer do business without paying the banking industry for each and every transaction.
"We [retail] are in a very competitive industry," she said. "We're looking for ways to cut prices."
Does anyone have any suggestions as to how merchants might cut their payment network costs?