Cryptos options in South Africa are taking off. While other nations have emerged as leading development centers for blockchain technology South Africa is emerging as an innovator in real-world crypto use.
The government of South Africa seems to be happy to let the crypto space grow, and crypto ownership in South Africa is the highest in the world.
The adoption of cryptocurrencies in South Africa shouldn’t come as a surprise. While the nation has a higher level of development than many of its Sub-Saharan neighbors, South Africa still deals with a huge domestic population that is unbanked, and a big gap between the rich and poor.
Cryptocurrencies have the ability to shift how people invest, save, and make everyday transactions. Many people in North America and the EU simply aren’t ready to start accepting cryptos at their small business, but that isn’t the case in South Africa.
Crypto Use in South Africa is Growing
Earlier this year, Tito Mboweni, who is the South African finance minister, told the public that, “It is anticipated that, following broad industry comment and participation, the crypto assets regulatory working group will be ready to release a final research paper on the subject during the course of 2019.”
While there hasn’t been anything solid in the way of crypto regulations, it appears that South Africa might be one of the first countries to officially add crypto regulations to its tax code.
Mboweni did state that crypto regulations would be added to the taxation laws amendment bill of 2018 and that cryptos wouldn’t be seen as personal-use assets for capital gain tax purposes. Instead, cryptos would be treated as a financial service for VAT purposes.
The stance that the government of South Africa is taking will allow the use of cryptos in the nation to grow. So far, the country has attracted some of the most innovative crypto companies and South African Brokers who are working to make cryptos a viable way to shop every day.
Cryptos Accepted Here!
South African crypto exchange DoshEx has partnered with one of the most innovative crypto payment processors, PundiX. The goal of the partnership will be to roll-out PundiX’s Point-of-Sale PoS payments system across South Africa. PundiX’s platform allows regular people to use cryptos as a means of payment, even if they don’t have a bank account.
While PundiX has conducted pilot programs in wealthy markets like Hong Kong, this program in South Africa has a huge potential. Sub-Saharan Africa has one of the world’s largest populations without bank accounts. It can be very hard to access financial services without a bank account, and cryptos are a perfect solution.
Zac Cheah, who is the CEO of PundiX Labs, told media that,
“XPOS is the easy, affordable access point into crypto for mainstream retailers and consumers…Now, an XPASS card loaded with crypto enables ordinary people to embrace the crypto-future, including millions of unbanked South Africans.”
By some estimates, more than 60% of the people in Sub-Saharan Africa are unbanked, which makes the region a massive potential market for both cryptocurrencies and PundiX.
South Africa Could be the Model
While there is a huge percentage of the Sub-Saharan population that is unbanked, many have simple cellphones. PundiX’s platform can be operated with a card, but there are other platforms that function via SMS messaging.
Cryptos have the ability to cut banks out of the financial economy and allow people to access financial services with very small amounts of money. South Africa seems to be building up a crypto economic model that could be implemented across Africa, and in other developing regions as well.
One of the biggest things that is allowing South Africa to progress in the crypto development space is the government’s openness to cryptos. India and Indonesia are other massive markets for cryptos, but the governments in both nations have basically banned the implementation of crypto-based PoS systems.
Crypto Usage is Likely to Grow
There are already platforms like M-Pesa, which is a mobile-phone based payment and money transfer platform. It has attracted more than 30 million users across Africa in the last two decades. While it doesn’t support cryptos, M-Pesa shows how open the African continent is to financial innovation.
Cryptos Options in South Africa are likely to expand over the coming years and could fuel a surge in other nations as well. Unlike the speculative crypto buying that fueled the crypto boom in 2017, cryptos are actually being used as money in Africa.
The next phase of crypto development is probably going to be focused on usage, and South Africa looks like an innovator in that regard.
