Dash is continuing to expand rapidly in Nigeria thanks to the work of Dash Africa, whom Dash Force News talk with about their recent experiences.

Dash Africa shared with Dash Force News some data on the mobile refill orders through Bitrefill.com, which allows prepaid mobile minutes to be purchased around the world with cryptocurrencies. Nigeria was once again the top country with 111 orders from 59 unique numbers. Their total purchase amount in fiat was around the equivalent of 191 Euros or 80,000 Nigerian Nairas, which is significant since mobile airtime can be purchased for as little as 100 Nigerian Nairas. Nigeria had 83 more purchases than the next biggest concentration located in Germany.

To help encourage use of Dash to purchase airtime, Dash is able to offer a 10% discount to consumers. The Dash Africa team is constantly working towards more Dash merchant and consumer adoption in Nigeria and the surrounding area through an advertising campaign that includes TV, brochures, and event organization. They are currently aiming to raise more money to organize a Dash FinTech Conference in Lagos to further educate individuals about Dash.

“We teach people to adopt and use Dash daily. Cryptocurrency is meant to be used in everyday life and not just kept to increase in value.”

Future Dash expansion plans

Part of the merchant integration that Dash Africa is planning involves working with Anypay, which plans to integrate the Nigerian Naira into their POS system by the end of their current funding cycling. Dash Africa told Dash Force News that this “would make it easier for businesses to get on board accepting Dash”.

The Dash Africa team said that a major roadblock to wide-spread adoption is the volatility so they are working to expand exchange adoption in the area, which combined with the Anypay POS will allow merchants to easily convert funds to and from fiat. Dash Africa believes that this will help quell many merchants’ fear of volatility and the risk of losing money, which will allow them to slowly become more comfortable with regularly using Dash.

Additionally, the Dash Africa team wants to integrate with Yellowcard.io, which allows consumers to buy Yellowcard gift cards in fiat at local stores and then take those gift cards to the Yellowcard.io website to redeem for cryptocurrency. The Dash Africa team told DFN that they plan to submit a proposal to make the integration happen, however, various technical issues around integration have to be solved first. At the time of writing, Dash Africa said that Dash Core Group has not responded to Yellowcard’s nor Dash Africa’s inquiries about finding a solution. This integration would help further the market reach of Dash to individuals that cannot use electronic payments to purchase Dash through online exchanges.

Dash making headway throughout Africa

Dash has been making significant inroads across Africa. Recently, Dash was integrated into the eBitcoinics exchange, which is the top cryptocurrency exchange in Ghana and Nigeria. This not only helps increase liquidity in the area, but will also aid in quelling the fears of volatility by local merchants. Dash has also expanded into numerous other countries throughout Africa such as Togo, Benin, Ghana, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Cameroon. Dash has been able to grow so expansively due to the DAO and the ability for community outreach teams to educate local consumers and merchants about how Dash can benefit them.

Dash has stayed true to the original goals of cryptocurrency to be a peer-to-peer digital currency by consistently maintaining low transaction fees, fast confirmation times, and security. This enables individuals to save money that is typically lost to expensive bank fees and regain financial and monetary independence from governments that have historically manipulated currencies. The individuals that stand to benefit the most from these features are living in countries with less developed banking sectors and/or more corrupt governments, such as some countries in Africa.