Pick n Pay Now accepts Bitcoin across 1,628 stores
Pick n Pay, a South African based grocery retailer now accepts Bitcoin payments for its goods via the lightning network for better confirmation time and lower gas fees.
Africa is becoming a major hub for crypto adoption, utility and advancement. When comparing it with the rest of the world, it has one of the top growing crypto communities of traders, investors and blockchain builders with the numbers increasing everyday. Over the past years we've watched the continent hit milestones upon milestones with the most notable in the not too distant future being the increased interest in Bitcoin that grew exponentially, leading to the West African country and Africa's giant, Nigeria topping the Google search volumes data table of counties constantly searching for what bitcoin is.
That said, many other countries in the continent are taking bold steps while others are of course trying to limit the technology from reaching the masses. However, the reality is that individuals are the builders of an economy, those they control the keys that can actually make or break the ecosystem, thus, every private company venturing into crypto investment or adoption is effectively creating paths for the technology to reach the masses.
Report has it that Pick n Pay has been working on adopting bitcoin as payment currency for it's goods for over three months, citing that the move was made right after the country’s financial regulator, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), amended its financial advisory legislation in October to classify crypto assets as financial products, bringing cryptocurrencies under regulation for the first time in South Africa and allowing financial service providers to offer crypto-assets both domestically and internationally.
Interestly, The retailer had disclosed plans to embrace the emerging technology as a channel for moving value through its business via crypto payments nationwide in November after being piloted for adoption for years in selected stores across the country. The report adds that the first experiment with cryptocurrencies took place in 2017, when the company moved to accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment as previously mentioned above in Cape Town, but given the flaws of the network for a business environment being the high transaction costs, especially during network congestion and high wait times, Pick n Pay had been hindered to fully move in.
However, in spite of this, Pick n Pay made continual advancement by partnering with Electrum and CryptoConvert to enable customers to pay via the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a second layer bridge to Bitcoin’s blockchain that allows off-chain, low cost and high speed transactions.
More to note in the recent adoption story is that store customers will be able to pay for items using cryptocurrency via smartphone apps or by scanning a QR code and accepting the South African rand’s conversion rate at the time of payment.
To pay with BTC, customers will need a Bitcoin Lightning Wallet and the CryptoQR scanner app from CryptoConvert, which is linked to the Bitcoin Lightning Wallet. The payment process requires users to scan an item’s QR code through the CryptoQR app and then proceed to the Lightning Wallet to confirm the rate and complete the transaction.cointelegrap report
An estimate of 13% South African crypto users which means over 7 million people are exposed to this technology. The recent move by Pick n Pay creates room for flexibility as it allows direct access to goods in exchange for a direct payment in Bitcoin, bridging the two worlds and easing the stress to find off-ramps before being able to shop.
More of these developments are expected to pour in moving forward and the cashless economy will be more crypto dominated.
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