One of South Africa’s largest supermarket chains, Pick n Pay, is ready to accept Bitcoin in all stores nationwide, meaning users can now use Bitcoin as a payment method to purchase items. According to a report from Tech Central, a South African-based tech news outlet, Pick N Pay is planning to roll out its cryptocurrency payments service to its stores nationwide in the coming months.
The store giant company had already done this experiment in selected stores. For example, in Cape Town, Pick n Pay started experimenting with Bitcoin payments five years ago, but at that time, it was upset by long transaction wait times and expensive costs. But now, after years of experience, the company is finally successful in its intention to launch Bitcoin as a payment service.
It is expected that its new feature will allow customers of its stores to pay for items using cryptocurrency through trusted apps on their smartphones. The users can do this by scanning a QR code and accepting the rand conversion rate at the time of payment, which looks very simple.
According to the Tech Central report, Chris Shortt, Pick n Pay’s group executive for IT, indicated that their company reached this goal after the advancement and evolution of cryptocurrency technology over the years. Moreover, he said it is now possible to provide an affordable service for high-volume and low-value transactions. Chris indicated that this step would promote financial inclusion in South Africa.
For the completion of this project, Pick n Pay partnered with Electrum and CryptoConvert, which helped them to make it possible for customers to pay for items through the bitcoin lightning network.
Cryptocurrency adoption in the South African region seems to be very high, as in October, South Africa’s Financial Sector Conduct Authority amended its financial advisory to define crypto assets in the country as financial products. And in the 2022 Global Crypto Adoption Index of Chainalysis, South Africa ranked 30th for cryptocurrency adoption.
