Coincards.ca, which provides gift cards to Canadians in exchange for cryptocurrency, has recently begun accepting Dash.
Coincards.ca currently offers “gift card options from more than 300 recognized brands”, including major retailers like Amazon, Walmart, Home Depot, and Netflix, according to the press release. Dash Force News caught up with Mike Olthoff, Founder & CEO, to further explore the company and their reasons for integrating Dash.
“We were continually contacted by members of the Dash community to integrate Digital Cash as a direct payment method on our site. We were impressed by the amount of support in the Dash community, their overwhelming positive vibe, and their willingness to put forth the work to ensure that development occurred to allow Dash to be integrated into different payment platforms. Once BTCPay had direct support for Dash, it was a no-brainer for us that Dash would be a fantastic addition to Coincards.”
Mike told Dash Force News how the cryptocurrency “adoption rate for merchant acceptance in Canada is slow, but the rate of Canadians buying, earning and looking to use their crypto is greatly increasing”. So Canadian consumers are often only left with the option to exchange into fiat via online or over-the-counter exchanges, which have higher fees. This led Mike and his team to create Coincards and their current set of goals.
“Our current goals are to (1) provide one of the fastest, easy-to-use, consumer-friendly and cost-effective services to Canadians that want to use their crypto for all of their everyday needs and wants, and (2) to build strong partnerships with retailers & distributors, showing the strong desire of Canadians to use their crypto in these establishments, and build trust among these merchants which will lead to direct adoption on their part.”
To further aid usability, Coincards is “providing full 24/7 online support” with their team of “full-time crypto specialists with a background in e-commerce that can assist in walking customers through the process of buying a gift card with Dash”.
Expanding cryptocurrency usability
Selling gift cards for cryptocurrencies have been increasing in popularity since it is a relatively simple and cheap way to use cryptocurrencies in the real world. The press release states that Caoincards “is Canada’s leading crypto to gift card exchange platform”, which gives their sales and platform even more significance. Mike told Dash Force News more about some of their most popular items.
“By far the most popular product that we offer is Amazon.ca Digital Gift Cards. Not only do these offer the purchaser a plethora of items to purchase at their fingertips, but we now offer “instant delivery” on Amazon.ca (after two confirmations on the blockchain, the Dash developers are currently looking into how Dash instant-send can be integrated). Additional “instant delivery” products include PlayStation, XBox, Nintendo, Netflix, Skip the Dishes, Steam & Google Play.”
This has led Coincards to want to “expand [their] catalogue of products, and [they] are currently working on new partnerships within Canada, and making as many of [their] products “instant” as possible”. As they further expand their offerings, Dash users within Canada have a very easy outlet for spending Dash.
Mike also further touched on how impressed him and his team have been with the Dash community.
“Dash has a very passionate, enthusiastic & supportive community that we are excited to be a part of. While Coincards can offer the Dash community a vast catalogue of products for their everyday needs & wants, we hope that the Dash community can support our current & future goals, and help us make vast crypto adoption a reality!”
Dash constantly working towards increased adoption
Dash’s main aim is to become an everyday payments method for everyday transactions, which ideally means direct transactions peer-to-peer for good and services. However, that is not always possible, especially for large companies that have many stakeholders to answer to and face a lot of legal uncertainty when deciding whether or not to adopt cryptocurrencies. Thus, gift cards are a good transitional step since it still allows Dash and cryptocurrency users to eventually get the goods and services they want. The rising demand can also be seen with Bitrefill’s recent integration of Dash and their limited time promotion of 10% off orders paid with Dash.
As Coincards mentioned, the gift cards provide a testing ground to demonstrate to merchants just how many Dash and cryptocurrency users are purchasing their gift cards with cryptocurrencies. This then paves the way for organizations like Coincards or the Dash community to try to convince these merchants to directly adopt Dash and cryptocurrencies. This grassroots and decentralized campaign has led to over 2500 Dash accepting merchants, worldwide, which is continuously growing.
