Boat Rental Marketplace Scales Using ACH Payouts to Owners

Whether you want to rent a kayak for an afternoon on a lake in the Midwest or schedule a day on a yacht in Miami, GetMyBoat makes water excursions more accessible and affordable.

With more than 150,000 listings worldwide, GetMyBoat is the No. 1 app for boat rentals and charters. Individual owners and small businesses in more than 180 countries have posted their rentals on the platform. They provide the boats, GetMyBoat provides the marketplace, transaction details and adventure seekers.

Want to sail on a catamaran in Columbia? Take a pair of jet skis on Lake Tahoe? Cruise through the Chicago River on a yacht? These are only a few of the experiences listed on the platform.

“We aim to enable boating for anyone, anywhere and at every price point.” says Nick Hill, Director of Finance at GetMyBoat. “We offer the owners the ability to get paid after every trip. Operating their business is their life. As soon as a trip is completed and confirmed, we send those funds out to owners using Dwolla.”

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ACH: The Scalable Solution

By using Dwolla as its connection to the ACH Network, it’s not just boat renters that get an exceptional experience—boat owners are delighted, too.

With Dwolla’s ACH API, GetMyBoat uses ACH transactions to quickly and securely payout boat owners within the United States without having to go to a third-party site. By integrating a white labeled solution, the payments experience on the marketplace app remains GetMyBoat branded.

Dwolla was GetMyBoat’s first payment service provider, dating back to when the app launched its payments and revenue offerings in 2016. Since going live with Dwolla six years ago, they have seen tremendous growth.

“For ACH payouts in the United States, Dwolla just made sense,” says Chief Operating Officer Bryan Petro. “Especially as we were looking for a partner that could scale with us. Looking back at the technology side, we were really impressed with not only the documentation but the ease of integration as a whole.”

As transaction and end user activity increases during the peak months, Hill says the payout process to owners is “effortless.” Their use of Next Day ACH transfer timing ensures funds clear and settle in a boat owner’s bank account in one to two business days.

“We make payments really easy for our clients, it’s probably the easiest step for them,” Hill says. “That’s why we’re using Dwolla’s service, to make our lives easier as a business. And we’ve always had great support from the account managers and tech side with Dwolla.”

GetMyBoat operated as a free marketplace platform for about three years before they made the decision to integrate Dwolla’s RESTful API. The process took less than 14 days.

“Dwolla does exactly what we need. It’s very hands off and we’re very happy with that.” Hill says.

While GetMyBoat currently uses Dwolla for payouts only, Hill says ACH for collections is on the roadmap as credit card interchange fees continue to eat away at profits.

“ACH is a much more affordable product than processing card payments,” Hill says, noting the 2-3% credit card fees that diminish GetMyBoat’s profit margin when multi-thousand-dollar rentals are scheduled on the platform using a credit card.

A Payments API Without Fuss

With boat owners consistently being paid on time, GetMyBoat is able to focus on other aspects of scaling the business, like exceeding 500,000 app downloads and boasting more than one million annual booking inquiries.

“We’re seeing users come back again and again to have different experiences on boats,” Hill says. Within a year of going live with Dwolla, the platform experienced a 180% increase in end users, a number that is now in the thousands and continuing to grow each month.

Of the challenges that come with maintaining a network of clients and delighting end users on a marketplace platform, ACH payments are not one of them.

“One of the best things about our relationship with Dwolla is that we haven’t really had to work with your team,” he says. “And I mean that in a positive way. Paying out our boat owners should be so simple that we don’t need to think about it. It’s that seamless with Dwolla.”

One-Stop Shop for Boat Owners

The brains behind GetMyBoat are working to dominate the emerging industry of person-to-person boat rentals. Just as Airbnb has become synonymous with vacation home rentals, GetMyBoat is working to achieve the same level of notoriety with its platform.

They want the platform to be a one-stop shop where boat owners can manage record keeping, bookings, payments tracking and more, all from one platform.

“We want our clients to be able to do everything all in a one stop shop, including payments, Dwolla helps us keep it easy for clients.” Hill says. “That’s our goal for them. We take a lot of pride in getting to that point, and we’re just in the beginning.”