Bitcoin adoption in Latin American countries started late compared to their western counterparts. But, the rate at which it is growing in these regions is surprising. The number of bitcoin users has been increasing and so are the number of merchants who accept bitcoin payments.
Mexico is one of the Latin American countries along with Argentina to lead the bitcoin revolution. Recently, a Mexican retail chain dealing with electronics and consumer products has recently announced that it is now accepting bitcoin payments. Started in 1970, Grupo Famsa is Monterrey, Mexico based retail company dealing with electronics and consumer applications. The company is also involved in banking sector.
Grupo Famsa has currently implemented the bitcoin payments feature only for its retail division leaving out its banking and finance businesses. All bitcoin payments at Famsa’s retail stores are processed by the well-known bitcoin payment services provider, BitPay. Grupo Famsa operates over 420 stores across North America. Majority of these stores are located across 78 cities in Mexico. Mexico’s neighbourhood country, United States has Famsa outlets in about 37 countries.
Grupo Famsa’s move to integrate bitcoin payments in its retail segment can be considered as the company’s move to gradually introduce bitcoin into its other services like loans, banking and other financial services. Incorporating bitcoin payment into ecommerce and retail websites is not something new anymore as many players across the world have started to opt for the cryptocurrency as one of the payment options.
Grupo Famsa is not the only company to incorporate bitcoin payments into their platform. Recently, the biggest online ecommerce marketplace in the region MercadoLibre announced that it will be accepting bitcoin payments through its own payments processor MercadoPago. MercadoLibre and MercadoPago are the Latin American equivalents of eBay and PayPal respectively.