Retail giant Pick n Pay to accept Bitcoin in 1,628 stores across South Africa

The South African market retailer Pick n Pay is expanding its Bitcoin (BTC) sum to each 1,628 stores crossed the state pursuing a three-month aviator investigating signifier successful 39 locations. 

As portion of its nationwide rollout, store customers volition beryllium capable to wage for items utilizing cryptocurrency via smartphone apps oregon by scanning a QR codification and accepting the South African rand's conversion complaint astatine the clip of payment.

Good news, everyone! CryptoQR is present progressive astatine each Pick-n-Pay stores crossed South Africa, including PnP explicit and covering shops! You tin besides bargain Airtime and Electricity, Plane and Bus tickets, and wage your municipal bills with #Bitcoin astatine the till! pic.twitter.com/3hVhgIJdTb

— CryptoQR ⚡️ (@CryptoConverted) February 1, 2023

To wage with BTC, customers volition request a Bitcoin Lightning Wallet and the CryptoQR scanner app from CryptoConvert, which is linked to the Bitcoin Lightning Wallet. The outgo process requires users to scan an item's QR codification done the CryptoQR app and past proceed to the Lightning Wallet to corroborate the complaint and implicit the transaction.

Related: South African crypto scenery primed for TradFi maturation aft FSCA ruling

Twitter users shared their acquisition with utilizing Bitcoin to wage for mundane items astatine Pick n Pay stores:

My archetypal #Bitcoin ⚡️payment astatine @PicknPay for a beingness fundamentally @CryptoConverted @ctw_podcast pic.twitter.com/tWSnGIH4Yd

— DrLuke ₿ (@DrLuke_B) February 1, 2023

The determination came aft the country's fiscal regulator, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA), amended its fiscal advisory authorities successful October 2022 to classify crypto assets arsenic fiscal products, bringing cryptocurrencies nether regularisation for the archetypal clip successful South Africa, and allowing fiscal work providers to connection crypto-assets some domestically and internationally.

The retail concatenation disclosed plans to rotation retired crypto payments nationwide successful November 2022, aft years piloting the work successful selected stores. A archetypal experimentation with cryptocurrencies took spot successful 2017, erstwhile the institution began accepting Bitcoin arsenic a signifier of outgo successful Cape Town, but transaction costs and hold times hindered the process.

During its aviator program, Pick n Pay partnered with Electrum and CryptoConvert to alteration customers to wage via the Bitcoin Lightning Network, a 2nd furniture added to Bitcoin’s blockchain that allows off-chain transactions

Among the African nations, South Africa appears to beryllium making sizeable advancement successful adopting cryptocurrency. South Africa ranks 30th globally successful presumption of cryptocurrency adoption according to Chainalysis' 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index. It has been estimated that astir 10% to 13% of the South African colonisation holds crypto assets.