NMI, a company that supplies white-label payments infrastructure to software firms and payment resellers, has acquired Dwolla, an Iowa-based provider of account-to-account payment software. NMI announced the deal on 19 May 2026. Financial terms were not disclosed.
About 60 Dwolla employees are joining NMI, along with more than 400 Dwolla customers. Dave Glaser, Dwolla's chief executive, becomes chief operating officer of NMI and joins its executive team, where he will help lead the integration. NMI said the combined business processes close to $700 billion in annual transaction volume.
NMI said it would keep supporting Dwolla's existing customers and partners while it builds Dwolla's technology into its own platform. Berenson & Company advised NMI, and Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, a Stifel company, was Dwolla's exclusive financial adviser.
What Dwolla built
Dwolla sells an API that lets businesses move money directly between bank accounts over the ACH network and real-time payment networks, without card networks in between. Its software standardises payment status, exception handling and reporting across those rails, and supports open banking and funds flows involving many payers and payees. NMI said hundreds of small businesses and Fortune 500 companies use it.
The company was founded in Iowa in 2008 by Ben Milne and Shane Neuerburg and is based in Des Moines. It raised more than $70 million from venture investors over its life. Its largest round, $21 million in July 2021, was led by Foundry Group, with Park West Asset Management, Union Square Ventures, Detroit Venture Partners, Firebrand Ventures and Next Level Ventures taking part.
Earlier backers included Union Square Ventures, which took part again in the 2021 round. Wikipedia records that the company raised about $1.31 million before it launched its service in December 2010. Milne led the company as chief executive in its early years; by 2021 the role was held by Brady Harris, and Glaser was in charge at the time of the sale.
Glaser said Dwolla had been built to help businesses run bank payments at scale through an API layer that brings ACH and real-time rails together.
“This acquisition is a continuation of our strategy to build the most robust, white-label, embedded payments platform for our channel and enterprise partners.”
Why NMI is buying
NMI's business is built around payment acceptance: a payment gateway, merchant onboarding and underwriting, merchant lifecycle management, risk tools and business capital, sold through independent sales organisations, software vendors, payment facilitators and financial institutions. Dwolla adds the ability to send money out as well as take it in.
With Dwolla, NMI's partners can add bank transfers, real-time payments, FedNow and payouts to their products. NMI listed uses such as marketplace seller payouts, loan disbursements and repayments, payroll, and business-to-business and supplier payments, in industries including property management, healthcare, insurance and lending.
Steve Pinado, NMI's chief executive, said Dwolla's infrastructure would also prepare NMI for newer models such as agentic payments, stablecoin-based settlement and remittances. NMI cited Juniper Research figures projecting that global account-to-account transaction value will rise from $91.5 trillion in 2025 to $195 trillion by 2030.
PYMNTS noted that Pinado had previously described NMI as an enabler that runs the underlying payments infrastructure so that partners can pick the functions they need, and that he planned to use AI heavily across the business.
What happens to customers
Dwolla customers will keep the bank payment infrastructure, team and support they already use. They will also gain access to NMI's card and in-person acceptance, including credit, debit, prepaid, HSA and FSA cards, mobile, in-app, online, in-store and unattended payments.
For NMI's existing partners, the deal means bank payments and payouts can be added without bringing in another vendor. Developers will be able to build across card, bank, real-time and newer payment rails through one set of APIs, NMI said.
NMI's sixth acquisition
NMI said Dwolla was its sixth acquisition in recent years, part of a plan to cover the full payment lifecycle from merchant sign-up to payout. Before the deal it reported about 235,000 connected devices, more than 300 EMV device certifications and over 6.5 billion transactions a year.
Pinado said Glaser and the Dwolla team brought experience in account-to-account payments and open banking, along with established customer relationships.
