Dash Embassy Thailand recently got WisePass, a lifestyle sampling service that allows users to pay a monthly fee and receive sampling allotments at various venues that are part of the network, to integrate Dash.
The service is currently available at over 300 venues in four cities; Bangkok, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, and Manila in Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines. They have already “done 2,000 transactions in December 2018 and aim at 20,000 transactions monthly by the end of December 2019”, but they believe that Dash can further help them accomplish their goal, as articulated by Lam Tran, CEO, and co-founder of WisePass.
“Providing some real use case to the blockchain ecosystem is a mission that WisePass has taken seriously. We have decided to position ourselves as a digital bridge between the crypto economy and the real economy. By doing so we enable crypto holders to spend their tokens as fast and simple as any other form of payment.”
For $35 USD, a user can topup their “one-time PASS”, which allows users “to enjoy a set lunch or dinner, a drink at Starbucks, a movie ticket, a haircut, a bottle of wine or spirits, a night in a villa, a session in some fitness club, a chiropractor session and soon many more”. A one-time PASS is scanned at the register of the merchant when the user wishes to redeem their credit and is cheaper than the regular subscription fees that vary based on country and number of passes. The passes have various restrictions such as number of vendor visits allowed or having set limitations of choices, but is overall intended to drive consumers to various partner merchants and try different products.
Cryptocurrency providing value for merchants
Many individuals within the crypto sector have been asking how to achieve wide spread adoption among merchants. While this might seem difficult at first, the answers is relatively simple; provide value for the merchants. Cryptocurrency offers various savings over credit card fees, chargebacks, non-inflation, etc, but these attributes can be hard for merchants to visualize. However, if a merchant sees their daily customer count dramatically increase after accepting cryptocurrencies, then they can more easily see how cryptocurrency acceptance is creating more revenue for their businesses.
A Dash partnership with WisePass helps make this possible by aligning the cost savings of cryptocurrency with the incentive model of discounts to get consumers in the door and possibly purchasing other goods/services. While consumers won’t be spending Dash directly at merchants immediately, a system like WisePass is creating the habit of getting consumers to regularly patronize specific merchants. This is the same concept that AnyPay’s DashBack program pursues to incentivize individuals to spend Dash at merchants. Then, since the consumer is paying their WisePass subscription in Dash, the hope would be that consumers would eventually ask merchants to take Dash directly so they can make additional purchases.
Dash finding innovative ways to communicate value
While cryptocurrency offers a lot of benefits to many different individuals, it has been difficult for most cryptocurrency enthusiasts to communicate that message to the general public. However, Dash has been able to fund multiple projects through its DAO Treasury that can demonstrate to individuals how Dash offers them added value through faster, cheaper, and more secure transactions without having to abide by state-created inflation nor censorship. Additionally, since each funded treasury project is operated independently in different areas of the world, there is a greater opportunity for competition to discover what messages and minimal viable products best communicates Dash’s value to consumers. Then with Evolution and DApps approaching on the development horizon, Dash’s is getting better at achieving adoption among marginal consumers that can benefit from its unique attributes.
