The popular service that enables individuals to send money via text messages has now launched their Telegram integration in Venezuela and Colombia to make their service even more accessible to the wider public.
Their launch comes after a beta test launch two months ago to work out the bugs. Lorenzo, CTO and Co-founder, explains why they pursued the Telegram integration on top of regular SMS text messaging.
“Telegram is the second most popular chatting app in Venezuela, and it’s specially popular amongst people who are into crypto. There are also many people who have cheap and/or old smartphones that can’t run wallets reliably due to memory problems, Dash Text in telegram allows them to use Dash without needing to install another app since they’re already using Telegram. Overall we believe it’s a great channel to open to broaden Dash accessibility.”
Lorenzo continued to explain that the simplicity, compactness, and the ease of use of Dash Text helps make it stand out among other wallet competitors and also justifies its existence.
“Dash Text is so simple to use that it has grown very popular, but I don’t think it is so much a matter of popularity to be honest, it’s more a matter of accessibility, some people just can’t use the apps, they don’t have the hardware to do so. However what is true is that if you’re going to show Dash to someone for the first time, Dash Text is the easiest way to do so, so even if they have a decent smartphone you can show them Dash quick without them needing to download anything, you get them excited and they can download the Dash wallet afterwards if they want to, so it’s great to get people on board.
Overcoming roadblocks to deliver monetary freedom to consumers
When a user wants to use Dash Text in Telegram for the first time, it will automatically tie into their Dash Text SMS wallet if they have one, and if not, a new wallet will be created for them. Dash Text is rapidly growing since they only recently expanded into Colombia and have México, Spain, Perú, Ecuador, Panamá, Argentina, Chile and the US next on their list of expansion areas to target since they are key markets for remittances.
However, the Dash Text team also planned to launch a WhatsApp integration since that messaging service is also very popular in their region, but WhatsApp banned cryptocurrency transactions on their platform. This is anticipated to be an anti-competitive move since there are strong rumors that Facebook, WhatsApp’s owner, is planning to launch their own cryptocurrency. This disappointed Lorenzo, but also did not surprise him.
“Honestly it didn’t surprise me as much, as soon as I heard Facebook was developing their own cryptocurrency I imagined at some point they would try to stifle competition in their own apps, I just didn’t think this would happen for a couple of years, so we still thought it was worth opening that channel of accessibility. Telegram is a much more crypto friendly platform and it’s also a non-profit so I don’t see them doing something similar at all.”
[tweet https://twitter.com/CoinText/status/1117130680134057984 align=’left’] Dash Text is not the only affected party since CoinText, which also enables cryptocurrency payments via SMS text, had to cancel their launch plans as well. While Facebook denying cryptocurrency integrations on their platform limits the scope of which the community is able to help those most in need, it also demonstrates the need for more decentralized and independent service providers. Thus, Dash is finding as many touch-points as possible to reach the most amount of individuals.
Dash finding new, innovative ways to reach consumers
Cryptocurrency was created to help those disenfranchised by the current monetary and financial system, but many of those individuals (60% of Venezuelans and 59% of Colombians) cannot even afford a smartphone, which is where most cryptocurrency wallets are located. As a solution, Dash Text enables these individuals to easily send and receive independent money from their non-smartphone with the knowledge that their payments are secured via the robust Dash network and can be spent at over 2,000 merchants in Venezuela and over 300 merchants in Colombia. Additionally, these cryptocurrency payments via SMS text vastly decrease the cost of sending remittances for more individuals. Then in Colombia, Dash teams are utilizing a completely different method to achieve adoption and supplying consumers with different ways to spend and accept Dash. The ability for the Dash network to fund these different projects in a decentralized way further helps ensure that consumers are getting the best product.
