Topic: [2017-09-18] South Africa’s Second Largest Supermarket Chain Pick n Pay Trials.. (Read 1903 times)

I have the same questions. Perhaps they have another control that allows zero confirmation transactions. Like you have to have a customer account to use BTC? I'll report back, but it will be in December.

Please report on the experience. It'll be interesting to see how many regular people are using it, and some indication of how frequently. I predict it may be a little prone to overall awkwardness, on-chain transactions are a bad fit for this kind of retail experience.

Hmmm. I'll be in southern Africa in a few months.  May have to pay these guys a visit?

Not really workable on-chain in the long term, hopefully the POS company involved (Electrum?!) will have the sense to implement Lightning payments sooner rather than later. Small, independent shops is one thing, but large chains of stores cannot tolerate anything but the smoothest POS experience.

Sidenote, surely this is not the same organisation that develops the Electrum wallet software? Thumbs down for confusing the marketplace if not, and sideways thumb for selling the brandname if so. I hope this won't mean bad things for Electrum wallet users in that case (although Electrum Wallet has always had that federated servers aspect that caused my disinterest in using it, maybe it could be good in the end, assuming that's the situation of course).

I understand that it is a trial, but I at least hope that they give it enough time to properly sink in. At first it might not look like there will be much usage of Bitcoin as payment option, but it will definitely pick up after a certain period of time. Even till this day, the far majority of the people look at Bitcoin as being an investment option rather than a currency to pay with. The African continent is a market with a massive amount of potential growth, but unfortunately, it isn't always being seen as such due to people pointing their focus on the Chinese market. I for once want to see people discard China and look at the bigger picture. Asia has two massive upcoming countries (Japan and South Korea) that are heavily contributing towards the current level of growth that we experience, and people still focus on China that doesn't contribute anything anymore - China is only causing problems.

Bitcoin has a good future in the African continent as there are more and more people who are getting into Bitcoin these days. We are hoping that more and more merchants would be accepting Bitcoin as part of their mode of payment mix. This is one of the best ways to promote Bitcoin to the common people...when they can use the currency easily the more that they can be confident to go for more Bitcoin. Once this trial can be successful -- even just mildly successful -- it can motivate other merchants to also follow the lead.

I am predicting that a time is coming when we would see more and more people to get into Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. In the face of the possible downtrend in China volume, any new market can be useful for the continuing growth of Bitcoin. I guess there are now many leaders for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency just waiting to promote this in the whole of Africa.

A major supermarket chain in South Africa, Pick n Pay, has started a trial to accept bitcoin payments in-store at its head office location. A payment technology company named Electrum provides the payments platform, with bitcoin exchange Luno providing the Bitcoin payment infrastructure.





Electrum provides the cloud-based enterprise payments platform used for bitcoin transactions. It is the first time for the company to provide a bitcoin payment solution.

Founded in 1967, the Pick n Pay group currently employs more than 80,000 people. The South Africa's Second Largest Supermarket Chain Pick n Pay Trials Bitcoin Paymentscompany sells food, clothing and general merchandise. The group has 1,560 stores in total, located in South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Mauritius, Swaziland and Lesotho. However, the trial is only at the head office campus store in Cape Town where customers can pay for groceries and services using bitcoin.

Pick n Pay executive Jason Peisl noted:


" Cryptocurrency and bitcoin are still relatively new payment concepts, yet we have been able to effectively demonstrate how we are able to accept such alternative payments. "

The bitcoin checkout process involves scanning a printed QR code using a bitcoin wallet app on the customer’s smartphone. The Bitcoin infrastructure is provided by Luno, a bitcoin exchange with a strong presence in Southeast Asia and Africa and an office in Cape Town.


https://news.bitcoin.com/south-africas-second-largest-supermarket-chain-pick-n-pay-trials-bitcoin-payments