Venezuelan Pharmacy Chain to Accept Cryptocurrency Payments

A Venezuelan pharmacy franchise will now accept dash cryptocurrency payments, through an integration with Panda Exchange’s proprietary payments system.

The Farmarket retail chain is piloting a dash-enabled point of sale system, XpayCash, that will allow customers to make instant cryptocurrency transactions, the Dash Core Group announced Monday. The payment rail will be rolled out to 22 pharmacy locations over the next two quarters.

Dash representatives will provide on-site training during the first two months of operations as part of the company’s efforts to onboard potential cryptocurrency users in the country, Panda Exchange partner Robert Mozo said in a press release.

Of the approximately 4,900 merchants that accept dash globally, nearly half are located in Venezuela, the press release said.

Much of this headway has been made by DiscoverDash, which began by offering dash training to smaller firms and family owned businesses, but has grown to attract more established enterprises.

Additional onboarding efforts were led by Dash Merchant Venezuela, which succeeded in making "business connections" by providing crypto-enabled POS to businesses, before shutting down for employee salary inconsistencies.

"We expect our partnership with Panda in Colombia and Farmarket in Venezuela to be a substantial move toward a purchase driven economy, where not only Venezuelans in Caracas will be able to pay directly in stores with Dash, but also their relatives in Colombia and elsewhere will be able to buy medicine from abroad and resolve health issues for their relatives and loved ones," said Ryan Taylor, CEO, Dash Core Group, in a statement.

Venezuela is quickly becoming a hotbed for actual cryptocurrency use cases. In May inflation reached 815,000 percent, following a one year high above 1.7 million percent. Under these economic conditions, cryptocurrencies present a store of value as well as stable form of payment for citizens. XPay charges a 3.99 percent transaction fee.

Venezuela flag photo via Shutterstock