Coinify, which provides a point-of-sales platform for merchants to accept cryptocurrencies, recently integrated Dash into their platform.

Coinify’s website claims that they are the “#1 virtual currency payment service provider in Europe” with over 30,000 merchants spread throughout 70 plus countries. Coinify allows merchants to accept up to 15 different cryptocurrencies and pays out amounts in government fiat.

Coinify is one of many cryptocurrency POS systems that exist today because of increasing consumer demand for merchants to accept cryptocurrency. One of the first POS systems was BitPay, which significantly helped Bitcoin adoption in the early years of Bitcoin’s life. However, some of their consumers have been inconvenienced with failed transaction sends because of BitPay’s usage of BIP-70. They are implementing a solution, but it nevertheless highlights how relatively new and underdeveloped the cryptocurrency-for-commerce space is and the importance of competition to give consumers and merchant more and better options.

Dash sees multiple POS integrations around the world

Dash is being integrated into more POS systems, such as Coinify and AnyPay, as well as have its own POS systems created, such as QR.CR and Spark. Dash Force News caught up with the lead developer of Spark, @kodaxx, and the lead developer of QR.CR, @Hans, to find out more about how their respective POS projects are advancing Dash.

@kodaxx started off by discussing the advantages of having a cryptocurrency POS system rather than a merchant just using their own wallet.

“Using your own wallet is a totally viable solution for many merchants, but the great thing about using a dedicated payment terminal is that is has no ability to send funds. This means that you can give employees access to the terminal without worrying about them emptying your wallet. Also, it puts the entire process of accepting a payment into familiar territory for merchants since it mimics current workflows.”

Spark has 94 currencies available in 11 languages to target global adoption, but @kodaxx does not have metrics on merchant adoption. He also added that “[f]iat conversion is currently done through uphold.com, but [he’d] like to do it natively as a part of the app” and “see[s] that as the largest future challenge”. The project was a treasury funded proposal, formerly called DashPay POS, and received 165 Dash over 1 month and @kodexx told DFN that “funding to keep development sustainable is the current challenge that [he is] facing”.

@Hans told DFN how their QR.CR POS system is designed for global use as well, but they have adapted numerous features to make the platform even more friendly for Venezuelans.

“The POS system is designed to work worldwide, with any currency, but for Venezuela we have had to customize the system to adopt the ‘street rate’ of the Bolivar, which is way different than the officially published rates by the VZ government. There are easy link buttons to Dash Merchant Venezuela plus the Venezuela help line phone number, to help merchants with any questions they may have. We work closely together with Dash Merchant Venezuela and Dash Help Venezuela on this project.”

@Hans said that around 500 of the 1500+ Venezuelan merchants that are registered on DiscoverDash are using their QR.CR POS platform. He added that many “are still using the standard Dash wallet, but are slowly starting to use the POS as well”. @Hans detailed how the “merchant has to link their extended public key to the POS system in order for it to work, which is a hurdle in subscribing them right now”. However, they are working on solutions and have chosen this method to “avoid dealing with any private keys” and to be “completely compliant in any jurisdiction”. One of the next “features [they will] bring is connection of the POS to the Dash Text system in Venezuela” and they “do not foresee any real challenges there”.

The increasing number of POS systems integrating Dash is a sign of Dash’s rising popularity for real life use cases through merchants.

Dash POS integrations driven by increasing demand

Dash is no stranger to increasing demand as it has seen rapidly increasing merchant adoption around the world, and specifically in Venezuela, over the past year. Dash has experienced this because of its ability to have median transaction fees that hovers around $0.0005 USD for a transaction to confirm in a couple minutes or a transaction fee of around $0.01-$0.02 USD for instant confirmation with InstantSend. This focus on extremely inexpensive and extremely fast transactions without sacrificing security is integral for real world adoption by merchants and consumers. Consumers do not want to have to pay large fees nor wait long for confirmations. Then merchants do not want to eat high transaction costs through lower product/service prices, inconvenience customers by waiting for long confirmations, nor risk double-spend fraud. Dash is able to solve these problems with its unique attributes that enable everyday usage, which increases consumer demand, and thus, increases merchant demand for Dash integrated POS systems.

 

Update: DFN was informed by @kodaxx that Spark also utilizes the street value of the Venezuelan Bolivar, as opposed to the government rate, whereas the article does not explicitly state that fact.