{"id":63263,"date":"2014-07-18T09:25:50","date_gmt":"2014-07-18T07:25:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=63263"},"modified":"2014-07-18T10:08:03","modified_gmt":"2014-07-18T08:08:03","slug":"takealot-now-accepts-bitcoin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/63263\/takealot-now-accepts-bitcoin\/","title":{"rendered":"Takealot now accepts Bitcoin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Takealot.com has announced that customers can now use Bitcoin to shop on its site.<\/p>\n

This follows the announcement on Thursday (17 July) that over 30,000 online sellers in South Africa can now accept the virtual currency through a partnership between local Bitcoin exchange, BitX and payment gateway, PayFast.<\/p>\n

Takealot.com is one of the 30,000 customers of the PayFast service.<\/p>\n

Making the announcement on Twitter, Takealot.com said the move to activate the service was due to feedback from clients presumably requesting the feature.<\/p>\n

\"Takealot<\/a>

Takealot Bitcoin tweet<\/p><\/div>\n

At the time of writing, there was no obvious indication on\u00a0Takealot.com’s site that Bitcoins are accepted, but payments are possible through the Instant EFT payment method<\/strong> (through PayFast).<\/p>\n

In May,\u00a0Takealot.com raised $100 million (just over R1 billion) from its major shareholder, Tiger Global Management, and aims to be the largest online retailer in South Africa within the next 12 months.<\/p>\n

Over the past five years Bitcoin has matured from being a theoretical crypto-currency to a viable transaction mechanism \u2013 though not without its controversies and downfalls.<\/p>\n

The currency is considered to be extremely volatile, and open to potential market manipulation through cyber attacks.<\/p>\n

In October 2013, Stellenbosch-based BitX \u2013 a market platform that allows individuals to trade Bitcoin using South African Rands \u2013 was acquired by Switchless, a provider of enterprise Bitcoin solutions.<\/p>\n

The Exchange is currently executing an expansion strategy to bring its services to new markets, including several African countries like Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa.<\/p>\n

More on Bitcoin<\/h3>\n

Bitcoin just got bigger in SA<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Is this South Africa\u2019s Bitcoin?<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Why Bitcoin may re-write banking practice<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Bitcoin: the internet\u2019s financial revolution<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Takealot.com has announced that customers can now use Bitcoin to shop on its site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":59131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[5537,26,4537,3314],"class_list":["post-63263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-bitcoin","tag-headline","tag-payfast","tag-takealot"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=63263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63279,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63263\/revisions\/63279"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=63263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=63263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=63263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}