PicknPay South Africa to accept cryptocurrency

PicknPay South Africa will start accepting cryptocurrency payments in 39 stores across the country. Over the past five months, the crypto payments program was piloted in 10 Western Cape stores.

South Africa has opened up cryptocurrency and digital assets, and now one of the country’s largest retailers will accept crypto payments to accelerate the adoption.

To make this possible, PicknPay is working with Electrum and Cryptoconvert. Electrum provides the payment platform, and Cryptoconvert enables payments through Bitcoin lightning Technology at the till point. The idea was initially tested in 2017 at the head office canteen in Cape Town. While this proved that the concept could work, the technology was just not up to speed, no pun intended. The technology was slow in processing, and the cost was also prohibitive.

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This will surely make PicknPay the first retailer to widely accept cryptocurrency payments, and this is a big deal for South Africa. It’s early days, but if any good should come of these new developments, then South Africa’s regulatory stance should surely take the plaudits. The South African Reserve Bank set the tone by encouraging banks to work with cryptocurrency service providers. This was followed up by South Africa recognizing cryptocurrency as a digital asset. This move will surely open the crypto floodgates in the Southern African nation.

Electrum

Electrum is a cloud-based payments processor. Electrum provides a way for customers to integrate multiple providers while connecting to modern payment solutions easily. Electrum has experience working with some of the biggest brands and businesses in South Africa.

Cryptoconvert

Cryptoconvert is a South African crypto payments processor that enables small and large businesses to accept payments in Cryptocurrency. Through their API, companies in South Africa can accept cryptocurrency payments while getting South Africa Rand (ZAR) settlements the next day, eliminating exchange rate risk for South African-based businesses when it comes to exchanging crypto.

PicknPay is HUGE in Africa

While the importance of this move is evident for cryptocurrency lovers in South Africa, it has the potential to impact many more African countries. Pick n Pay owns or franchises a mind-blowing 2081 stores in 8 African countries, South Africa included. 1910 these stores are in South Africa, but the remainder are in Botswana (13), eSwatini (28), Lesotho (4), Namibia (40), Nigeria (1), Zambia (21) and Zimbabwe (64).

Also read: South African crypto platforms must be regulated by 2023

While we accept that this move has been facilitated by South Africa’s regulatory stance on cryptocurrency, there is hope for countries like Namibia, which recently allowed crypto payments between willing parties, to implement the same concept in their own Pick n Pay stores. We’re still a long way off, with only 39 stores enabled at the time of launch. Crypto payments have been gaining momentum, and recently a South African company launched a crypto debit card just before VISA also launched a crypto debit card. PayPal, an international payments processor, filed intellectual property claims for downloadable software that allows sending and receiving crypto as well as payments processing for crypto.

The list of Pick n Pay stores supporting Bitcoin payments is as follows: