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APIs · head to head

Dwolla vs Very Good Security

Dwolla logo

Dwolla

APIs

Account to account payment API for ACH, RTP and FedNow with pay by bank and instant payment routing

From
On request
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite
Very Good Security logo

Very Good Security

Cybersecurity

Tokenisation proxy that keeps card and personal data out of your own systems and out of PCI scope

From
$1000/month
Rated
-
Full reviewWebsite

The short version

  • Each has a real cost: Dwolla nothing is published: there are no per-transaction rates, no platform fee and no minimum on the pricing page, so every buyer negotiates blind and small platforms have no way to sanity check what they are quoted.; Very Good Security vGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • They diverge on capability: Dwolla covers ACH transfers, Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy.
  • Prices and features above were last checked on 31 August 2026.

Where they differ

Only the attributes on which Dwolla and Very Good Security actually diverge.

Attributes where Dwolla and Very Good Security differ
AttributeDwollaVery Good Security
Starting priceOn request$1000/month
Pricing modelquotePer month
PlatformsWebWeb, API
CategoryAPIsCybersecurity

Identical on both: free tier (No), user rating (Not yet rated).

What each one covers

Drawn from each product's published feature list. An absence here means we hold no record of it - not that the product lacks it.

Only in Dwolla

  • ACH transfers
  • Instant payments
  • Rail orchestration
  • Bank account verification
  • Dwolla Balance
  • Webhooks and reconciliation
  • Pay by bank
  • White label flows

Only in Very Good Security

  • Aliasing proxy
  • PCI scope reduction
  • Network tokenisation
  • Processor optionality
  • Card issuing data
  • Vault and access controls
  • Data residency options
  • Compliance artefacts

What people use each for

The jobs each tool is most often brought in to do.

Dwolla

  • An insurance or lending platform disbursing funds to customer bank accounts where card payout fees would destroy the marginnot Very Good Security
  • A B2B marketplace collecting large invoice payments by bank transfer rather than paying interchange on cardsnot Very Good Security
  • A payroll or gig platform that needs to pay workers instantly and wants the rail chosen automatically by receiving bank capabilitynot Very Good Security
  • A property management system collecting rent by ACH with verified bank accounts and reliable return handlingnot Very Good Security

Very Good Security

  • A marketplace facing its first PCI DSS Level 1 assessment that wants to keep card data off its own estate rather than harden a dozen servicesnot Dwolla
  • A merchant negotiating with a second acquirer that needs card credentials portable so the negotiation is real rather than theoreticalnot Dwolla
  • A fintech collecting bank account and identity documents that wants sensitive fields absent from logs, backups and analytics warehouses by constructionnot Dwolla
  • A card issuer that must display a full PAN in its own mobile app without the app or its backend touching cardholder datanot Dwolla

Where each one falls short

Documented limitations, not opinions. Every one is a constraint you would hit in normal use.

Dwolla

  • Nothing is published: there are no per-transaction rates, no platform fee and no minimum on the pricing page, so every buyer negotiates blind and small platforms have no way to sanity check what they are quoted.
  • It is payments only, with no deposit accounts, card issuing or general ledger, so companies embedding financial products need at least one further vendor and the reconciliation between them.
  • Instant payment reach depends on the receiving institution supporting RTP or FedNow, so a meaningful share of payouts still fall back to ACH timing regardless of what the API can do.
  • ACH returns and administrative returns remain your operational problem, and platforms new to bank rails routinely underestimate the customer support load that failed debits generate.
  • Access to instant rails runs through Dwolla banking partner, which reintroduces a bank dependency into a product that otherwise avoids sponsor bank programme risk.

Very Good Security

  • VGS sits in the live path of every request carrying sensitive data, so its latency and availability become yours, and an outage in the proxy is a payment outage no matter how healthy your own systems are.
  • Token portability is the whole selling point yet leaving VGS means migrating tokens back out, a project the vendor has no incentive to streamline, so the lock-in you removed from your acquirer partly moves to VGS.
  • Entry pricing at around one thousand US dollars a month is real money for a pre-revenue fintech, and it buys volume-limited throughput, so cost scales with exactly the growth that made you buy it.
  • Scope reduction is not scope elimination: your QSA still assesses how you integrate, and teams regularly discover that a support tool or an internal admin screen pulled plaintext back in and dragged systems into scope again.
  • Proxy-based interception constrains how you design request flows, and non-standard payloads, streaming uploads or binary formats often need custom routing rules that make debugging production issues noticeably harder.

Pricing, plan by plan

Dwolla

On request
  • Dwolla Payment API$undefined/year
    • Custom pricing built around transaction volume, rails used and integration needs
    • No published per-transaction rates or platform fees
    • Volume based plans for platforms and enterprises

Very Good Security

$1000/month
  • Starter$1000/month
    • Aliasing proxy
    • Vault storage
    • PCI scope reduction
  • Growth$undefined/month
    • Network tokenisation
    • Multiple processors
    • Data residency options
  • Enterprise$undefined/year
    • Custom vault architecture
    • Dedicated support and SLA
    • Contractual compliance coverage

Which should you pick?

Choose Dwolla if

  • You need ach transfers.
  • You also want instant payments.
Dwolla review

Choose Very Good Security if

  • You need aliasing proxy.
  • You work on Web, API.
  • You also want pci scope reduction.
Very Good Security review

Questions people ask

Is Dwolla or Very Good Security better?
Neither clearly leads. Dwolla starts at On request and Very Good Security at $1000/month, and user ratings are close enough to be indistinguishable. Choose on capability and platform support.
Which is cheaper, Dwolla or Very Good Security?
Dwolla starts at On request and Very Good Security at $1000/month.
Does Dwolla or Very Good Security run on more platforms?
Dwolla runs on Web. Very Good Security runs on Web, API.
What is Dwolla best used for?
Dwolla is most often used for an insurance or lending platform disbursing funds to customer bank accounts where card payout fees would destroy the margin, a b2b marketplace collecting large invoice payments by bank transfer rather than paying interchange on cards, a payroll or gig platform that needs to pay workers instantly and wants the rail chosen automatically by receiving bank capability, a property management system collecting rent by ach with verified bank accounts and reliable return handling. Of those, an insurance or lending platform disbursing funds to customer bank accounts where card payout fees would destroy the margin and a b2b marketplace collecting large invoice payments by bank transfer rather than paying interchange on cards are not what Very Good Security is typically brought in for.
What can Dwolla do that Very Good Security cannot?
Dwolla covers ACH transfers, Instant payments, Rail orchestration, Bank account verification. Very Good Security covers Aliasing proxy, PCI scope reduction, Network tokenisation, Processor optionality.

Answered from the vendors’ own pages

Dwolla: What does Dwolla cost?

It does not publish anything. Pricing is custom and built around volume, rails and integration. Establish the monthly platform fee and any minimum before negotiating per-transaction rates.

Very Good Security: Does VGS make me PCI compliant?

No. It removes cardholder data from your systems so your assessment covers a far smaller boundary, but you still complete an assessment and your integration is part of it.

Dwolla: Does it support instant payments?

Yes, through both the RTP network and the FedNow Service, with automatic selection based on the receiving bank. Where neither is supported, payments fall back to ACH.

Very Good Security: Can I move to another processor without re-collecting cards?

Yes, that is a core reason people buy it. The vault reveals stored credentials to whichever processor you route to.

Dwolla: Is Dwolla a bank?

No. It is a payments platform that works through banking partners. It does not offer deposit accounts or card issuing.

Very Good Security: What does it cost?

Published entry pricing is about one thousand US dollars per month; growth and enterprise tiers are quoted.

Dwolla: How does bank account verification work?

Either instantly through open banking connections or by micro-deposit verification, which takes a day or two but works where instant linking fails.

Very Good Security: Is it only for card data?

No. The proxy handles any sensitive field, including bank details, national identifiers and documents, though payments is where the product is now focused.

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