It has happened, PnP is now accepting BitCoin as payment, albeit for a limited time and not at all stores. I wonder what fees will be involved and how long it will take a transaction to take place. This is a good thing because having such a big retail company backing a CryptoCurrency means that access into this model will be all the more easier for us South Africans. I do not know why I would have a reason to purchase BitCoin and use it at PnP other than as a novelty or if I had been donated or earned some CryptoCurrency, beside it is such a volatile market that I could stand to loose a couple hundred bucks because I chose the wrong queue to pay at – or score, who knows.
Personally I think that everyone should at least get their foot in the door, be it for 0.005 or even 1 BitCoin, or any other CryptoCurrency.
I signed up with luno for a small number of satoshi (unit of bitcoin currency) and used some to buy into electroneum as a form of mobile mining.
Up until now, South Africans would have to convert Rands to Dollars or some currency accepted by Crypto Exchanges like CoinBase, Kraken or Gemini, but there are limits, fee and difficulty in setting up accounts to make the transfer. There is a claim that converting to Dollars to buy BitCoin will giving you more Rand value of BitCoin in the end, but I think that one would have to make big transfers to make this significant and the timing would need to be accurate i.e. watching the USD/ZAR exchange rate and BitCoin price very closely.
Now South Africa has luno, which is good because or the easy entry. Bear in mind that it might take a few days to verify you identity and make your first deposit before you can convert to BitCoin, also ready the fine print – there are fees. Just when you thought that the idea of decentralization would take out the middle man luno is the middle man, but one could very well make transactions using the wallet address without luno, anyway that is something I have yet to figure out.