The South African retail giant, Pick n Pay, has reported a significant increase in the value of monthly cryptocurrency payments, rising from approximately ,350 to ,000. The regions of Gauteng, KwaZulu-Natal, and the Western Cape in South Africa account for the lion’s share of Pick n Pay’s crypto transactions. Retailer Sees More Crypto Transactions in […]
Bitcoin News
South African Retailer Pick n Pay Now Accepting Payments via BTC at All Its Stores
Pick n Pay, one of South Africa’s leading retailers, reportedly now accepts bitcoin as payment at all its stores across the country. Using the bitcoin lightning network, Pick n Pay’s customers can now buy items such as groceries, airtime and electricity tokens.
Using BTC for Everyday Purchases
Just a few months after it began accepting bitcoin payments at selected outlets, the South African retailer, Pick n Pay (PNP) now reportedly accepts bitcoin at its more than 1,500 stores across the country. According to reports, PNP customers can now buy groceries, airtime and electricity using the bitcoin lightning network.
As reported by Bitcoin.com News in Nov. 2022, the South African retail giant’s acceptance of bitcoin as a means of payment was made possible by the Financial Sector Conduct Authority (FSCA)’s decision to declare crypto a financial product. Before that, PNP said it had experimented with BTC payments at one of its staff canteens in 2017. While the experiments were successful the retailer said using the technology was at that time seemingly not cost-effective.
BREAKING: 🇿🇦 One of South Africa’s largest retailers, Pick n Pay, now officially accepts #Bitcoin and Lightning payments in ALL of its over 1,500 stores 🙌
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) February 1, 2023
Reacting to the announcement, Crypto QR, a South Africa-based crypto payments firm, saluted PNP’s move which allows residents to use bitcoin for everyday purchases.
“Good news, everyone! Crypto QR is now active at all Pick-n-Pay stores across South Africa, including PnP express and clothing shops! You can also buy airtime and electricity, plane and bus tickets, and pay your municipal bills with Bitcoin at the till, “Crypto QR said in a tweet.
The Legitimate Use of Bitcoin in a Store
Meanwhile, some Twitter users have lauded PNP for taking a step that helps those seeking to promote the use and adoption of bitcoin as an alternative payment method. One user Kelly Yanes said this is the first time she has “seen legitimate uses of bitcoin in person at a public space and store.”
Until BTC stabilizes in price using it to buy things is a horrible idea. Seconds after you buy something it can go up and you overpaid a ton
— NoFilterNoFluff (@7th_Rule) February 2, 2023
However, a few other users were quick to highlight the disadvantages of using the crypto asset for everyday purchases.
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Huge Chinese Retailer Launches Open Blockchain Platform
One of China’s largest retailers, JD.com, is launching a blockchain platform. The idea behind the JD Blockchain Open Platform is to allow the company’s enterprise customers to develop their own applications based on the innovative and disruptive technology.
JD.com Hopes to Encourage Innovation with New Platform
The goal of the JD.com’s new platform is to provide the company’s business customers with a framework to develop their own smart contract-based systems. These will be hosted on public and private enterprise clouds. JD.com’s customers will be able to create and fine tune their own smart contract applications in line with their specific needs, according to a blog entry posted earlier today.
The post goes on to state that the JD Blockchain Open Platform is built on “multiple underlying technologies”. The hope is that by using these technologies, JD.com’s clients will be able to streamline vital operational procedures. These include tracing the movement or goods, verifying the authenticity of goods, assessing ownership, settling transactions, and providing digital copyright.
JD.com believes that these functions will enhance the overall productivity of their enterprise customers, as well as providing greater transparency, trust, and convenience. The functionality of the platform will be similar to Amazon’s blockchain templates that we reported on in April of this year.
JD Blockchain Open Platform represents the latest step by the massive Chinese retailer towards providing technological solutions to various issues that face traditional industries. The firm calls the strategy Retail as a Service (RaaS).
Clients of JD.com will benefit from the JD Open Platform’s “one-click deployment.” It is hoped that by simplifying the process as much as possible, JD.com will be able to help even those companies that lack detailed knowledge of blockchain technology, yet want to take advantage of its disruptive potential.
The platform itself will also feature an application store that will provide various blockchain tools or software features for use by JD.com’s enterprise customers. These have been designed through collaboration between in-house developers, as well as Independent Software Vendors. JD.com also aim to continuously improve the application store by recruiting new software vendors and creating a vibrant community for those vendors working on the platform.
All additions to the application store will undergo a stringent quality assessment program before being listed. It is hoped that such high standards will encourage customers to trust the service, which will in turn lead to a much more vibrant ecosystem of business-grade applications that are entirely customisable to each client’s specific needs.
JD.com’s head of big data and smart supply chains, Jian Pei, is quoted as stating the following about the development of the platform:
“JD Blockchain Open Platform is a culmination of the expertise and experience in blockchain technology that we initially developed for our own operations, to provide more visibility to consumers.”
Image from Shutterstock
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Cryptocurrency Transactions Surpass Credit Card Sales at Silicon Valley Jewelry Retailer
Stephen Silver, the CEO at Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry, has revealed that after four years of integrating Bitcoin in 2014, cryptocurrency transactions have surpassed credit card sales at the retail shop and 20 percent of the company’s sales are now attributable to cryptocurrency.
Silver, who had previously led Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry to become the first jewelry retailer in the world to accept cryptocurrency back in 2014, said:
“Cryptocurrency has surpassed the volume of retail credit-card purchases in the company in a very short time period. We’ve created revenue that the company would not even enjoy without being able to accept cryptocurrency. Large sums of money are where we are finding cryptocurrency to be a huge advantage.”
Why it Works at Jewelry and Real Estate Industry
Last year, investors of a few hundred million dollar property development project in Dubai were taken aback by the decision of the project managers to accept payments in Bitcoin for the sale of its apartments and commercial spaces.
At the time, Lingerie tycoon Michelle Mone and her billionaire business partner Doug Barrowman announced that the sale of a 7 million property in Dubai will primarily be processed in Bitcoin. In a matter of weeks, 50 luxury flats in Dubai were sold in Bitcoin, to customers that had to convert fiat to the dominant cryptocurrency to purchase the 50 apartments.
“We allocated 50 out of 1,300 developments. We’ve sold all out. Some bought ones and twos, and one individual bought ten,” said Mone, who added that Barrowman decided to accept cryptocurrencies because he was frustrated Bitcoin was not being used enough by retailers and businesses.
For retailers and business owners in the jewelry and real estate industry, accepting payments in Bitcoin and other major cryptocurrencies can be significantly cheaper and more efficient than bank transfers because of the high fees required by financial institutions and the three to five business-day transaction processing periods of banks.
In an interview with CNN, Garrick Hileman, an economic historian at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, said that economically, accepting payments in Bitcoin makes sense for expensive products and properties because with items that cost in the range of ,000 to million, transaction fees sent to banks can easily surpass the ,000 to ,000 mark.
“If you’re only paying a transaction fee on a piece of art that’s worth tens of thousands, the fee is basically zero. But if you’re paying 2 or 3% on a piece of art of that value, then the numbers can go up quite a bit,” Hileman said.
Jewelry Buyers Save 1.5%
In addition to bank fees, buyers of jewelry can also save up to 1.5 percent on their purchase because transactions made in Bitcoin do not require banks and other third party service providers to convert reserve currencies.
Similar to the mindset of billionaire real estate developer Doug Barrowman, Silver emphasized that as supporters of the cryptocurrency sector, the company has been monitoring the rapid growth rate of the cryptocurrency market and is satisfied by the increasing maturity of the industry.
“Given that Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry is based in Silicon Valley, the cradle of innovation, we’ve been monitoring the development of blockchain technology since 2008. In 2014, we felt it had matured to the point that we could bring the technology into our store.”
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World’s Largest Diamond Retailer Joins Blockchain Tracking Solution Pilot
Signet Jewelers, the world’s largest diamond retailer, announced yesterday that it will be the first to join the blockchain Tracr pilot program run by diamond miners De Beers.
Proof of Conflict-Free Diamonds
Signet will join other industry leaders in trialling the Tracr platform in its pilot phase and will expand the pilot to include traceability all the way to the diamond store itself. They will also provide input on catering for the retail side of the project and will focus on the tracking of diamond jewellery rather than on the diamonds themselves.
The aim is to create a digital certificate for every diamond registered on the platform. This certificate will be stored on the blockchain and will contain its key attributes and transactions. The benefits of this is that consumers can check that the diamond is natural and conflict-free. In May, De Beers reported that it had successfully tracked 100 diamonds across the supply chain using this technology.
In an announcement, Bruce Cleaver, CEO of De Beers Group, said:
“Tracr is focussed on bringing the benefits of blockchain technology to the full diamond value chain – providing consumers with confidence, the trade with increased efficiency and lower costs, and lenders to the industry with greater visibility.”
De Beers is an American-owned diamond mining company that provides one-third of the global supply of diamonds. Earlier this month they reported that the global consumer demand for diamond jewellery had hit a record high of billion in 2017, up two percent from the proceeding year.
Virginia C. Drosos, CEO of Signet Jewelers, said:
“We are joining the Tracr pilot because we believe the project not only has strong potential to facilitate increased transparency and confidence within the industry, but it can also foster much-needed digital transformation.”
Tracr is a means for the diamond industry to track diamonds from the mine to the customer using blockchain technology. The pilot project was launched in January 2018 and is set to fully launch later this year. BCG Digital Ventures, who are supporting the platform, is a corporate investment and a business incubator.
Blockchain technology for supply chains is effective because it uses public ledgers that cannot be altered. This allows businesses and consumers to scan the item and check its entire history with the knowledge that this has not been altered and is publicly accessible.
For Tracr, the technology allows customers to check that the diamonds have been produced in a conflict-free environment. Diamonds have been known for funding wars in countries including Angola, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Global Witness were behind a campaign that resulted in an international government certification scheme, but they acknowledged that this did not solve the problem.
NewsBTC reported that Coca Cola are looking into blockchain technology to end supply chain forced labour. Blockchain technology could be used to drastically reduce child and forced labour. U.S.-based fintTech company Emergent is aiming to create a gold-backed coin that is focused on responsible gold mining and processing.
OSA DC is a blockchain and AI marketplace which is designed to help retailers manage their inventory. It aims to allow retailers to manage their shelf space and ensure they have a constant supply of products available for customers. Using the blockchain based software enables them to identify inefficiencies and gives them the knowledge to know where to improve.
Featured image from Shutterstock.
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