Dwolla

Yeah, back then, you know, uh, it was just about when Mt. Gox was, was getting into proliferation and people using that as a main way.

Um, I did use it a little bit, um- Back then you had to, like, you had to make an account with this thing called Dwolla, and Dwolla was a way to get your money into Dwolla, and then Dwolla, then you could move your money from Dwolla into Mt. Gox or, you know, and pe- or people were using things like BitInstant from Charlie Shrem and, and going to, like, uh, local pharmacies or wherever it was and, and wiring money and buying Bitcoin that way.

Um, wallets, I think mostly we were just using Bitcoin Core.

Um, I can't really remember if there were, um, mobile wallets that anybody was actually using back then.

Around the end of 2010, a new company in Des Moines spread its wings and made an announcement at Mars Cafe.

The company was called Douala, and it would be entering a new era, mobile payments.

Daniel Bossman, the owner of Daisy Chain Coffee in East Village, was an employee at Mars Cafe at the time of the launch party and remembers people cheering when transaction number one went through.

Bossman said, Nobody really knew what it was, so I don't think it had a lot of attention for that opening night.

It seemed to gain traction from there, and then by the end of the year, I felt like everybody was using Dwala.

In May, Douala was acquired by NMI, a Schaumburg, Illinois-based company that specializes in embedded payments infrastructure.

Also, all 60 employees of Douala were offered jobs at NMI, said David Glazer, the chief operations officer with NMI and formerly the CEO at Douala.

The vast majority of the 60 Douala employees nationwide have come over to NMI and now have positions there.