Venezuela: Gov’t Crypto-remittance Platform Opens as Crypto-pay Booms

Cryptocurrencies are once again making the headlines in Venezuela – with a chain of pharmacies set to accept crypto pay, a government-run crypto-remittance platform now “fully operational” and a crypto-friendly department store claiming crypto pay success.

As previously reported, Venezuela’s Superintendencia Nacional de Criptoactivos (Sunacrip), the country’s cryptocurrency regulator, has been working on a remittance platform named Patria since early this summer. Sunacrip had previously announced that Patria would allow people based both in the country and abroad to send Venezuelan residents Bitcoin and Litecoin tokens.

And in a recent state radio interview, Sunacrip chief Joselit Ramírez told listeners that Patria is now “fully operational.” He added that Patria would allow citizens in “any country in the world” to send tokens, and was the “easiest and safest way to send money” to Venezuelans.

Meanwhile, Dash says that it has begun a pilot with Farmarket, a chain of pharmacies with 22 branches – mainly in the capital, Caracas. The American company says the pilot will run for two months at Farmarket’s three “top stores,” with a “rollout to the entire chain expected to be completed by the end of 2019.”

Dash says, per an official release, that it will deploy its XpayCash system to allow payment in Dash and “other cryptocurrencies.” The company says it will co-organize “education activities at the pilot stores throughout August and September 2019, before expanding into more locations.”

And Venezuelan department store Traki claims that it has processed a 1,000 cryptocurrency transactions since March this year. Speaking to media outlet Criptonoticas, the head of Traki’s crypto-pay department stated that Bitcoin was crypto-paying shoppers’ favorite token, followed by Dash and Litecoin.

Last week, Traki sealed a deal with Pundi X that saw all 49 of Traki’s Venezuelan stores equipped with XPOS blockchain-powered point-of-sale hardware, allowing in-store payment in nine cryptocurrencies. Traki began accepting pay in BTC and four other cryptocurrencies last year – with support for Venezuela’s own Petro token added earlier this year.