We bought a loaf of bread from Pick n Pay with Bitcoin — and it just worked

MyBroadband tested paying with Bitcoin at Pick n Pay in Centurion Mall by purchasing a loaf of bread, and it worked flawlessly.

Pick n Pay has partnered with Electrum and CryptoConvert to enable Bitcoin payments at 39 stores throughout South Africa.

The South African retail giant has announced that it will roll out support for Bitcoin payments across all its stores in the coming months.

Customers need two things to be able to use this service:

• A Bitcoin wallet that is compatible with the Lightning Network
• The CryptoQR app from CryptoConvert

We used a Muun wallet, as it was one of the wallets recommended and tested by CryptoConvert.

We transferred some Bitcoin into our new wallet, which took a few minutes, as is standard with normal Bitcoin transactions.

Payments at Pick n Pay work through the Lightning Network — a scaling layer for Bitcoin that offers near-instant transactions and lower network fees.

Regular transactions on the Bitcoin blockchain can take from several minutes to an hour to settle. Transactions can also become quite expensive if the blockchain becomes busy.

The Lightning Network provides a separate infrastructure layer on which Bitcoin transactions can execute quickly and cheaply, with settlement happening on the main Bitcoin blockchain later.

To ensure our Muun wallet was working, we opened the CryptoQR app, connected it to our wallet, and confirmed with a small test payment.

With everything set up, we headed to Pick n Pay in Centurion mall.

We picked a loaf of Albany white bread and headed to the teller.

As per the instructions from CryptoConvert, we selected “Contactless QR” on the payment terminal instead of the usual credit/debit card option.

A QR code appeared, which we scanned with the CryptoQR app on our smartphone. It immediately redirected to Muun, which required our wallet PIN to open.

After typing in our PIN, we could approve the transaction, which went through in seconds.

We paid only 0.00000001 BTC in network fees which equates to around R0.0037, significantly less than the 70c average CryptoConvert said to expect for Lightning transactions.

Transaction fees may vary depending on the wallet used and how busy the network is at the time of purchase.

Our total payment came to 0.00005238 BTC, which at the time was around R19.35.

This slight variation from the R19.29 we were supposed to pay comes down to the price fluctuations during the transaction.

Therefore, taking the price fluctuations into account, we effectively paid six cents for the transaction.

After the payment cleared, the terminal printed out our slip, and we were on our way.

The slip states the payment method as “Crypto QR” and shows no other fees.

Getting a Lightning-capable wallet funded was the most challenging part of the process, and that was dead easy as it works like any other Bitcoin transaction.

While we won’t likely be using Bitcoin for our groceries, crypto traders, miners, and other enthusiasts can now buy necessary everyday items from Pick n Pay without cashing out or relying on vouchers.

We hope to see this becoming available at more general stores, as it is a big step in cryptocurrency becoming a usable payment method.

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