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Farmarket, a 22-location Venezuelan pharmacy franchise, has added Dash as a payment option thanks to a partnership with Xpay, increasing Dash adoption in Venezuela.

#Venezuela Ya disponible para realizar sus pagos en nuestras sedes: .- Centro Comercial Santa Paula

.- Centro Comercial Lido

.- Centro Comercial Ciudad Tamanaco Próximamente en nuestras 22 sedes. pic.twitter.com/pRwMpAVN4Z — Grupo Farmarket (@GrupoFarmarket) August 27, 2019

Announced this week, Farmarket, a Venezuela-based chain of pharmacies with over 250,000 monthly customers claimed, announced that it had integrated Dash for payments. This will allow Venezuelans to use Dash to purchase pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and more through the XpayCash payment terminal. According to Cinthya Sagues, general manager for Farmarket, this integration will add the franchise to the existing Dash economy in the region:

“For Farmarket, innovation supports our core values of serving clients, growth and system development, so being able to offer Dash through XpayCash will allow us to offer the most updated payments technology on the market. Having the support from the Dash teams directly in the stores will allow us to bring the Dash experience we have seen in many parts of the country into our stores, and we are confident this will translate to a short learning curve and an improved service level to our customers.”

The integration is being debuted with a pilot at a few select stores in the Caracas area, with a full rollout to all 22 locations nationwide planned by the year’s end.

A major integration enabled through the Xpay and Panda partnership

The Farmarket integration was secured thanks to a partnership with Xpay, the payment processor operated by Panda Exchange. According to Panda Exchange CEO Arley Lozano, this was the result of a long partnership with Dash Core Group’s business development department:

“We have been working with the Dash Core Group for this expansion for quite some time now, and being able to add Farmarket to our customer base will open up a door of opportunity for cryptocurrency adoption in Venezuela and the world. Being a Bitcoin advocate and store owner offering Bitcoin payments since 2013, I realized almost nobody was using it to pay because of the difficulties to convert into fiat and getting used to working with exchanges, wallets and more. So we designed XpayCash in a way it offers the possibility to cash out completely or keep a percentage of crypto, in this way merchants can learn about the usability and possibilities of crypto as they use it.”

Dash is now accepted at @GrupoFarmarket in Caracas!

Thanks to our alliance with @XpayCash by @exchange_panda users can pay with #Dash at CCCT, Centro Lido + Santa Paula stores, + also get support from our teams if needed; We will cover all 22 stores soon! https://t.co/7gyQ6sLnvO pic.twitter.com/rqmpM98Wyn — DASH (@Dashpay) August 27, 2019

Dash was first integrated into the Panda Exchange late last year, which included InstantSend support, recognizing deposits instantly. Xpay, the payment processor service run by the exchange, integrated Dash late July, increasing options to use the currency in Latin America.

Building Dash’s use case for essentials as well as remittances

According to Ryan Taylor, CEO of Dash Core Group, the addition of Farmarket not only improves Dash’s adoption in the region by allowing it to be used to purchase critical supplies, but it enables a special remittance use case as well:

“Enabling Dash payments at Farmarket is a massive step in growing our ecosystem of retailers. Dash users can now pay for essential products and medicines at a well-known and trusted pharmacy brand. 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.”

The use case of using Dash to transmit remittances to Venezuela has grown stronger with the addition of the ability to pay for critical medical supplies directly, rather than having to convert to local currency first. Additionally, with services like Dash Text enabling transactions across a host of devices and supporting an ever-growing list of countries, acquiring and sending useful remittances with Dash has proven easier than ever.