What can you do with bitcoins?

You can do online shopping

Through payfast.co.za bitcoin is an accepted method of payment at over 30 000 online websites using payfast, one of South Africas leading payment processors.  If you are shopping online in South Africa, there is a good chance the website you are using accepts bitcoin as a method of payment. You can read more about it directly from PayFast 

Remittance, sending money back to South Africa from abroad

Sending  money home to South Africa from the UK or any other country, is quick and easy using bitcoin. If you setup a payfast.co.za account here in South Africa, which is free, you can accept bitcoins and have them instantly converted to South African Rand, and then deposited into your bank account at a cost of only 1.9%.  Sending money via bitcoin to South Africa will take at most about an hour for 4 confirmations on the bitcoin network.

Payfast are quick to process the funds, and deposit the Rand into your bank account. You dont have to bother about visiting a bank during office hours, waiting for days for money to clear, or some of the high costs that you will get charged for accepting foreign currency and converting it to Rand.

Pay for products and services offered by other bitcoin users

You can pay anyone you want in bitcoins, provided they have a bitcoin wallet that you can send coins to. You can send money to friends and family instantly anywhere in the world, without going through any banks and paying there fees.  Even some tourists visiting South Africa bring bitcoins and trade them locally for ZAR so that they dont have to pay high fees at banks.

As a new user, you only need to choose a wallet that you will use online, install on your computer or on your mobile phone. Once you have your wallet, you will get your first Bitcoin address and you can create more whenever you need one. You can disclose one of your Bitcoin addresses to your friends so that they can pay you or vice versa, you can pay your friends if they give you their addresses. In fact, this is pretty similar to how email works.

If you register with one of our two local bitcoin exchanges www.luno.com you will get a wallet address from them, which you can get people to send money to if you wish. Please bear in mind that if you trust 3rd party companies like exchanges with your bitcoins you are at some level of risk.