For those who find logging into Dwolla's app too onerous when it comes time to pay (PINs are hard), the Des Moines, Iowa startup has a new way to send money: Just tweet it. Seriously.

The company has introduced a feature that ties a Twitter account to a Dwolla account, which allows users to send money with nothing more than a tweet. A company spokesman called it more or less a "weekend project" designed to demonstrate the potential value and convenience of the Dwolla platform and its API.

And it is convenient. To send money, the sender first sets up the connection between the two accounts using the PIN code for his Dwolla account. After that, the user need only send a tweet including the recipient's Twitter handle, the amount to send and the hashtag #dwolla. That's it. The money is deposited into the recipient's linked Dwolla account in near real time.

An added benefit to Dwolla is that the feature becomes an acquisition tool as non-Dwolla account are prompted to open an account in order to get tweeted money.

There are still some questions about how a feature that relies on Twitter will scale. Twitter isn't known for its security. And if left open, any third-party application used to access Twitter could become a portal for an unauthorized user to tweet funds willy nilly.

But at first glance, the new feature does exactly what Dwolla intended: It demonstrates that the company's platform lends itself to some truly disruptive ways to send and receive money.

Thanks to Mike Dudas (@mdudas) from Google and Alexander Taub (@ajt) from Dwolla for allowing me to test the new feature by sending me money. Proceeds from the test (all $1.10) will be donated to charity. 

For more stories like this, visit the money transfer/P2P research center