Bitcoin remittances to South Africa

Bitcoin remittances to South Africa

A remittance is a transfer of money by a foreign worker to an individual in his or her home country. Money sent home by migrants competes with international aid as one of the largest financial inflows to developing countries.

  • Remittance fees (12%) are higher in Africa than in any other continent (the global average is 8% and in South-East Asia it is a mere 4%)
  • Bitcoin is expected to boom mainly as an easier and cheaper mean for diasporas to send money back to their families.
  • The world is becoming more mobile and technology is allowing more of them to accelerate the flow of money back home

Sending money to South Africa costs a lot, as anyone doing a transfer at Western Union or Moneygram can attest. Money transfer companies pay a lot for compliance. In the US for instance, they have to get a licence for each of the 50 states they operate in. The process of sending money through these companies is also painful, with many manual operations and long queues for customers on week-ends.

Using bitcoin for remittances to South Africa is the solution

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.

The micro-remittance market ($20 and less) has been poorly addressed by the giants of the industry and is an area where bitcoin transactions are surging ahead. Now it is easy for friends and family or even customers to send small amounts of money to South Africa at a low cost.

Another option is to trade the bitcoin you send back to South Africa on the bitcoin market.

You could send money back using bitcoin, and then sell it on one of the bitcoin exchanges locally, and then withdraw the Rand to your bank account. This can be easily done on both Ice3x.com and Luno.com websites. You are also able to trade your bitcoin using localbitcoins.com to find buyers or sellers near you.