Pick n Pay expands Bitcoin payment trial ahead of full country-wide launch

[Jan]

Pick n Pay rolling out Bitcoin payments across South Africa — starting with these 39 stores

Pick n Pay has expanded its Bitcoin payments trial to 39 stores across South Africa’s major cities, the retailer has announced. It plans to roll out to all its stores in the coming months.

“While for many years crypto was something for specialists on their computers, or used by early adopters trying it out, things are changing,” Pick n Pay stated.

 

[InvisibleJim]

Be nice if they extended it to let you buy Bitcoin for cash at the till.

 

[grca]

Fantastic news! I'd like to know what Pick 'n' Pay is doing with the BTC it earns, if they hodl or sell.

 

[quovadis]

Fantastic news! I'd like to know what Pick 'n' Pay is doing with the BTC it earns, if they hodl or sell.

Most likely they've got a partner who is just converting it to fiat and paying them seamlessly. Similar to how some of the payment processors operate.

 

[deweyzeph]

Just hope they tell their customers what a tax nightmare they are going to get themselves into when they spend their Bitcoin. Every time you spend Bitcoin it is a taxable event because Bitcoin is not recognised as a currency by SARS. Good luck with that.

 

[Snyper564]

Just hope they tell their customers what a tax nightmare they are going to get themselves into when they spend their Bitcoin. Every time you spend Bitcoin it is a taxable event because Bitcoin is not recognised as a currency by SARS. Good luck with that.

Yup absolute nightmare this is the reason I will never get a crypto card. Cash out what you need spend where you want...

 

[kota]

Personally, I am all for digital currency, but not the current cryptocurrency form, maybe it's just me, but I can't see using something like bitcoin which is known to be volatile for day to day spending as a good idea, btc can easily change 10% in value in a day, if I uses it, I would be constantly checking the exchange rate at the till...
But this is good news for crypto speculators.

 

[deweyzeph]

Personally, I am all for digital currency, but not the current cryptocurrency form, maybe it's just me, but I can't see using something like bitcoin which is known to be volatile for day to day spending as a good idea, btc can easily change 10% in value in a day, if I uses it, I would be constantly checking the exchange rate at the till...
But this is good news for crypto speculators.

Besides the tax nightmare, the volatility of Bitcoin makes this entire thing unworkable.

 

[cdev]

Personally, I am all for digital currency, but not the current cryptocurrency form, maybe it's just me, but I can't see using something like bitcoin which is known to be volatile for day to day spending as a good idea, btc can easily change 10% in value in a day, if I uses it, I would be constantly checking the exchange rate at the till...
But this is good news for crypto speculators.

The fiat currency you currently use, the Rand, is already digital. Physical cash represents <1% of all Rand in existence. If you make an EFT payment, a few entries get updated in a centralised database owned by your bank.

Fiat currencies have also become increasingly volatile. The Rand has lost 24% to the Dollar over the past 7 months.

 

[deweyzeph]

The fiat currency you currently use, the Rand, is already digital. Physical cash represents <1% of all Rand in existence. If you make an EFT payment, a few entries get updated in a centralised database owned by your bank.

Fiat currencies have also become increasingly volatile. The Rand has lost 24% to the Dollar over the past 7 months.

This exactly. Always makes me laugh when people go on about digital currencies as if they are a new thing. Every currency in the world has pretty much been digital since the invention of the computer.

 

[cdev]

Just hope they tell their customers what a tax nightmare they are going to get themselves into when they spend their Bitcoin. Every time you spend Bitcoin it is a taxable event because Bitcoin is not recognised as a currency by SARS. Good luck with that.

Let's hope SARS adopts a personal use asset approach similar to Australia:

Crypto asset as a personal use asset | Australian Taxation Office

Work out if your crypto asset is a personal use asset and when a personal use crypto asset is exempt from CGT.

www.ato.gov.au

 

[W@P]

Fantastic news! I'd like to know what Pick 'n' Pay is doing with the BTC it earns, if they hodl or sell.

They play on Luno

 

[backstreetboy]

Just hope they tell their customers what a tax nightmare they are going to get themselves into when they spend their Bitcoin. Every time you spend Bitcoin it is a taxable event because Bitcoin is not recognised as a currency by SARS. Good luck with that.

I couldn't care any less about SARS.

 

[deweyzeph]

I couldn't care any less about SARS.

You obviously have never had the pleasure of being audited by SARS.

 

[AppleFanZA]

It does not have to be a tax nightmare. You could have a spend wallet for payments as opposed to savings/investing, and we are seeing some jurisdictions exclude such payments from tax reporting, hopefully SARS takes the logical approach. Obviously, if you are funding it from a savings/investment balance you would report that one transaction (same as if you sold).

 

[Sensorei]

You obviously have never had the pleasure of being audited by SARS.

Maybe some people are smarter than you and know how to do this without being traced.

 

[cdev]

Besides the tax nightmare, the volatility of Bitcoin makes this entire thing unworkable.

I'm severely nitpicking the timeframe now but Bitcoin has been more stable than most other asset classes including currencies over the past 3 months.

While this payment solution might be ahead of its time, the Bitcoin price will eventually stabilize (and likely keep appreciating against fiat currencies due to its limited supply).

 

[deweyzeph]

Maybe some people are smarter than you and know how to do this without being traced.

Well, if that's how you like to live your life. Personally I like to sleep at night without looking over my shoulder. Ask all the good folks over at the Silk Road how "untraceable" crypto transactions are.

 

[backstreetboy]

Maybe some people are smarter than you and know how to do this without being traced.

Lol he thinks SARS is going to care about the pie and can of coke he bought with a few satoshi.

 

[kota]

The fiat currency you currently use, the Rand, is already digital. Physical cash represents <1% of all Rand in existence. If you make an EFT payment, a few entries get updated in a centralised database owned by your bank.

Fiat currencies have also become increasingly volatile. The Rand has lost 24% to the Dollar over the past 7 months.

I probably should have phrased it better, I was thinking of CBDC (central bank digital currency) / "crypto fiat" when I was talking about digital currencies. Yes I do realize most of our money in circulation is digitize, and CBDC will just be an evolution / improvement upon that.

Yup, ZAR lost around 29% of its value if we measure from its peaks earlier this year mainly due to strengthening of USD, in comparison, btc lost around 60% from its peaks this year. The difference however is the volatility differences between the two, a large swing day in ZAR/USD is about the 3-4%, while in BTC/USD, the swings can be +10% and occurs pretty frequently and a 5% swing intraday is pretty average.

Another difference is that since we uses ZAR in our day to day payment, you are not really worried about exchange rate when you pay for something locally, but this changes when you use BTC to pay for things locally, suddenly, you need to think about the exchange rate. Price stability is probably the thing that is the most important when it comes to using a currency day to day and I am failing to see how BTC can be justified to have an edge against ZAR in day to day use?

Why use BTC for groceries when you have to worry about its exchange rates at the till when you can just use a debit card denominated in ZAR?