I bought from Takealot using cryptocurrency without touching a bank
MyBroadband tested buying a product from Takealot using vouchers purchased with cryptocurrency on Bitrefill.
Bitrefill is a website that offers vouchers and services in exchange for cryptocurrency that recently launched Takealot vouchers.
We used some cryptocurrency obtained by mining to buy vouchers and used these to purchase a USB charger from Takealot — all without ever having to use a bank.
Bitrefill offers R250 and R1,000 vouchers for Takealot, with the price in different currencies relating closely to the current market price.
We purchased two R250 vouchers using Litecoin.
The total cost, including the 0.001 LTC network fee, was 0.32517992 LTC.
At the time of purchase, the exchange rate was R1623.20 per LTC. Therefore, we spent Litecoin worth R527.83 for Takealot vouchers worth R500.
These amounts are highly dependent on what the market is doing at the moment of purchase, as the website freezes a price for a few minutes while you pay.
As the exchange rate increased during our transaction, we ended up paying more a few minutes later. If it had been decreasing, we would have effectively paid less.
It took around 5 minutes for the payment to be completed. The website detected the payment almost instantly, and we only had to wait for the transaction to be confirmed on the network.
We immediately received the two voucher codes after the transaction was done.
On Takealot, we added the charger to our cart and checked out normally, using the voucher codes for payment with no problems whatsoever.
As we did not use all R500 from the vouchers, the balance was left in our account for future purchases.
The order was delivered after the long weekend as expected.
While this process is still not streamlined enough for day-to-day shopping, it is encouraging to see more services becoming available that allow the use of cryptocurrency.
Loading ...