Dash adoption in Colombia has been rapidly increasing and recently passed the threshold of 300 merchants and 25% growth in active wallets.

[tweet https://twitter.com/StayDashy/status/1079032726811013126 align=’right’] George Donnelly, Coordinator of Dash Colombia, went on to highlight that the majority of merchants they onboard in Colombia are encountering cryptocurrency for the first time or they have only heard of Dash before.

“I would estimate at least 90% of our merchants and event attendees have not heard of Bitcoin. Of course, Dash is brand new to them as well. The developing world is virgin territory for cryptocurrency. By committing to a developing-world strategy, Dash can dominate the regions where crypto is most apt to take hold first.”

Many of these new merchants tend to be restaurants and technology businesses since they have become accustomed to a rapidly evolving industry, according to George. [tweet https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1075540404882284544 align=’right’]

“My theory is that sectors where the consumer has the greatest selection are the easiest to onboard, because merchants know competition is stiff and they are looking for any edge they can get. Commodities merchants, such as vendors of food, fuel, etc, however, can not tolerate volatility as their profit margins are slim. We need a BitPay-like solution to be able to onboard them in meaningful numbers.”

This merchant distribution further contributes to their low-cost adoption strategy since they are able to leverage the food and beverage merchants into a casual lunch event to get more consumers using Dash.

Scaling adoption at low cost

George explained how adoption in Colombia naturally makes sense and all that was needed was the right adoption strategy and hard work.

“Colombia is a stable economy with a high rate of self-employment and a high-rate of economic informality that is historically right of center politically, a market economy, with abundant individual liberty and a strong entrepreneurial streak. We are employing simple on-the-ground marketing techniques with courage and consistency.”

Their team focuses on their low-cost Dash Invites program to inexpensively increase Dash exposure to potential repetitive users, while also focusing on the merchant. George highlighted that they try to avoid turning events into meetups or conferences that end up costing more money and do not focus on merchants that are key to wider Dash adoption and usage.

Currently, Colombians acquire Dash at “online exchanges, CoinLogiq ATMs, EOBot cloud mining, and Dash Colombia events” and these are increasing with demand in the country. Dash Colombia has been setting up merchants with the Spark POS system and also recently began to utilize the AnyPay POS system as well. Having both options give merchants additional payment choices, security, and a standardized system that allows the merchant to accept Dash even when the manager/owner is not physically present in the store.

Dash increases users via decentralized adoption campaigns

George and Dash Colombia only started to get funded by the Dash DAO Treasury a few months ago and has only received limited funds, but has been able to leverage those limited funds into significant returns for the Dash network. Their inexpensive merchant-centric approach is simple, unique, and emerged independently. Their approach differs from the Venezuelan community adoption campaigns and others around the world, which diversifies and increases the probability of success for the overall Dash network. It also helps reveal the decentralized nature of the Dash community since every group is independently pursuing strategies that work best for their area and identity.

[tweet https://twitter.com/georgedonnelly/status/1075423029960892416 align=’left’] Nevertheless, at the same time, the Dash community is connected enough to be able to share strategies and results to see what works and how to improve campaigns for the future. As one example, George and many others have been heavily involved in the new Brainstorm channel on the Dash Talk discord to discover new ways to increase Dash adoption and help it realize its potential of an everyday, peer-to-peer, decentralized digital currency.