Add Dwolla to your app

Plaid and Dwolla have partnered to offer businesses an easier way to connect to the U.S. banking system. Plaid enables businesses to instantly authenticate a customer's bank account, giving them the ability to leverage the Dwolla API to connect to the ACH or RTP® networks for sending and receiving payments. Dwolla’s solution offers frictionless ACH or real-time payments payments for companies looking to automate their current payments process and scale their business.

With the Plaid + Dwolla integration, your users can verify their accounts in seconds by inputting their banking credentials in Plaid’s front-end module. Plaid’s mobile-friendly module handles input validation, error handling, and multi-factor authentication–providing a seamless onboarding experience to convert more users for your business.

As part of the integration, Dwolla customers can access Plaid’s full suite of APIs for clean, categorized transaction data, real-time balances, and more.

You'll first want to familiarize yourself with Plaid Link, a drop-in client-side integration for the Plaid API that handles input validation, error handling, and multi-factor authentication.

Your customers will use Link to authenticate with their financial institution and select the depository account they wish to use for ACH or RTP® transactions. From there, you'll receive a Plaid access_token, allowing you to leverage real-time balance checks and transaction data, and a Dwolla processor_token, which allows you to quickly and securely verify a bank funding source via Dwolla's API without having to store any sensitive banking information. Utilizing Plaid + Dwolla enables a seamless workflow for sending and receiving payments.

You'll need accounts at both Plaid and Dwolla in order to use the Plaid + Dwolla integration. You'll also need to be a Dwolla customer in order to add a bank funding source.

First, sign up for a Dwolla account if you don't already have one.

Next, verify that your Plaid account is enabled for the integration. If you do not have a Plaid account, create one. Your account will be automatically enabled for integration access.

To verify that your Plaid account is enabled for the integration, go to the Integrations section of the account dashboard. If the integration is off, simply click the 'Enable' button for Dwolla to enable the integration.

Use the Dwolla Sandbox to test the Plaid + Dwolla integration for free.

After connecting your Plaid and Dwolla accounts, you'll need to complete your Plaid application profile and company profile in the Dashboard, which involves filling out basic information about your app, such as your company name and website. This step helps your end-users learn more how your product uses their bank information and is also required for connecting to some banks.

In order to integrate with Plaid Link, you will first need to create a link_token. A link_token is a short-lived, one-time use token that is used to authenticate your app with Link. To create one, make a /link/token/create request with your client_id, secret, and a few other required parameters from your app server. View the /link/token/create documentation for a full list of link_token configurations.

To see your client_id and secret, visit the Plaid Dashboard.

1app.post('/api/create_link_token', async function (request, response) {
2  // Get the client_user_id by searching for the current user
3  const user = await User.find(...);
4  const clientUserId = user.id;
5  const request = {
6    user: {
7      // This should correspond to a unique id for the current user.
8      client_user_id: clientUserId,
9    },
10    client_name: 'Plaid Test App',
11    products: ['auth'],
12    language: 'en',
13    webhook: 'https://webhook.example.com',
14    redirect_uri: 'https://domainname.com/oauth-page.html',
15    country_codes: ['US'],
16  };
17  try {
18    const createTokenResponse = await client.linkTokenCreate(request);
19    response.json(createTokenResponse.data);
20  } catch (error) {
21    // handle error
22  }
23});

Once you have a link_token, all it takes is a few lines of client-side JavaScript to launch Link. Then, in the onSuccess callback, you can call a simple server-side handler to exchange the Link public_token for a Plaid access_token and a Dwolla processor_token.

1<button id="linkButton">Open Link - Institution Select</button>
2<script src="https://cdn.plaid.com/link/v2/stable/link-initialize.js"></script>
3<script>
4  (async function(){
5    var linkHandler = Plaid.create({
6      // Make a request to your server to fetch a new link_token.
7      token: (await $.post('/create_link_token')).link_token,
8      onLoad: function() {
9          // The Link module finished loading.
10      },
11      onSuccess: function(public_token, metadata) {
12        // The onSuccess function is called when the user has
13        // successfully authenticated and selected an account to
14        // use.
15        //
16        // When called, you will send the public_token
17        // and the selected account ID, metadata.account_id,
18        // to your backend app server.
19        //
20        // sendDataToBackendServer({
21        //   public_token: public_token,
22        //   account_id: metadata.account_id
23        // });
24        console.log('Public Token: ' + public_token);
25        console.log('Customer-selected account ID: ' + metadata.account_id);
26      },
27      onExit: function(err, metadata) {
28        // The user exited the Link flow.
29        if (err != null) {
30            // The user encountered a Plaid API error
31            // prior to exiting.
32        }
33        // metadata contains information about the institution
34        // that the user selected and the most recent
35        // API request IDs.
36        // Storing this information can be helpful for support.
37      },
38    });
39  })();
40
41  // Trigger the authentication view
42  document.getElementById('linkButton').onclick = function() {
43    linkHandler.open();
44  };
45</script>

See the Link parameter reference for complete documentation on possible configurations.

Plaid.create accepts one argument, a configuration Object, and returns an Object with three functions, open, exit, and destroy. Calling open will display the "Institution Select" view, calling exit will close Link, and calling destroy will clean up the iframe.

The Link module handles the entire onboarding flow securely and quickly, but does not actually retrieve account data for a user. Instead, the Link module returns a public_token and an accounts array, which is a property on the metadata object, via the onSuccess callback. Exchange this public_token for a Plaid access_token using the /item/public_token/exchange API endpoint.

The accounts array will contain information about bank accounts associated with the credentials entered by the user, and may contain multiple accounts if the user has more than one bank account at the institution. In order to avoid any confusion about which account your user wishes to use with Dwolla, it is recommended to set Account Select to "enabled for one account" in the Plaid Developer Dashboard. When this setting is selected, the acccounts array will always contain exactly one account.

Once you have identified the account you will use, you will send the account_id property of the account to Plaid, along with the access_token, to create a Dwolla processor_token. You'll send this token to Dwolla and they will use it to securely retrieve account and routing numbers from Plaid.

1const {
2  Configuration,
3  PlaidApi,
4  PlaidEnvironments,
5  ProcessorTokenCreateRequest,
6} = require('plaid');
7// Change sandbox to development to test with live users;
8// Change to production when you're ready to go live!
9const configuration = new Configuration({
10  basePath: PlaidEnvironments[process.env.PLAID_ENV],
11  baseOptions: {
12    headers: {
13      'PLAID-CLIENT-ID': process.env.PLAID_CLIENT_ID,
14      'PLAID-SECRET': process.env.PLAID_SECRET,
15      'Plaid-Version': '2020-09-14',
16    },
17  },
18});
19
20const plaidClient = new PlaidApi(configuration);
21
22try {
23  // Exchange the public_token from Plaid Link for an access token.
24  const tokenResponse = await plaidClient.itemPublicTokenExchange({
25    public_token: publicToken,
26  });
27  const accessToken = tokenResponse.access_token;
28
29  // Create a processor token for a specific account id.
30  const request: ProcessorTokenCreateRequest = {
31    access_token: accessToken,
32    account_id: accountID,
33    processor: 'dwolla',
34  };
35  const processorTokenResponse = await plaidClient.processorTokenCreate(
36    request,
37  );
38  const processorToken = processorTokenResponse.processor_token;
39} catch (error) {
40  // handle error
41}

For a valid request, the API will return a JSON response similar to:

1{
2  "processor_token": "processor-sandbox-0asd1-a92nc",
3  "request_id": "[Unique request ID]"
4}

Once you've obtained the processor_token, you'll then pass it to Dwolla as the value of the plaidToken request parameter, along with a funding source name, to create a funding source for a Dwolla Customer:

1POST https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/customers/AB443D36-3757-44C1-A1B4-29727FB3111C/funding-sources
2Content-Type: application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json
3Accept: application/vnd.dwolla.v1.hal+json
4Authorization: Bearer pBA9fVDBEyYZCEsLf/wKehyh1RTpzjUj5KzIRfDi0wKTii7DqY
5
6{
7  "plaidToken": "processor-sandbox-161c86dd-d470-47e9-a741-d381c2b2cb6f",
8  "name": "Jane Doe’s Checking"
9}
10
11...
12
13HTTP/1.1 201 Created
14Location: https://api-sandbox.dwolla.com/funding-sources/375c6781-2a17-476c-84f7-db7d2f6ffb31

Once you’ve received a successful response from the Dwolla API, you’ll use the unique funding source URL to identify the Customer’s bank when initiating ACH or RTP transfers.

You can create Dwolla processor_tokens in Sandbox (sandbox.plaid.com, allows testing with simulated users) or Production (production.plaid.com, requires Dwolla Production credentials). While Plaid also has a third environment, Development, used for limited live testing, it is not recommended to test this integration in the Development environment as the processor tokens created in that environment are not compatible with Dwolla's test and production environments.

To test the integration in Sandbox mode, simply use the Plaid Sandbox credentials when launching Link with a link_token created in the Sandbox environment.

Your account is immediately enabled for our Sandbox environment (https://sandbox.plaid.com). To move to Production, please request access from the Dashboard.

For a real-life example of an app that incorporates the creation of processor tokens, see the Node-based Plaid Pattern Account Funding sample app. Pattern Account Funding is a sample account funding app that creates a processor token to send to your payment partner. The processor token creation code can be found in items.js.

For a tutorial walkthrough of creating a similar app with Dwolla support, see Account funding tutorial.

Find answers to many common integration questions and concerns—such as pricing, sandbox and test mode usage, and more, in our docs.

If you're still stuck, open a support ticket with information describing the issue that you're experiencing and we'll get back to you as soon as we can.