Bidorbuy now taking bitcoins

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The partnership makes it easy for the thousands of bidorbuy sellers to accept payments from millions of international bitcoin users.

“We believe it is important to provide our buyers and sellers with a choice of payment methods,” says Jaco Jonker, bidorbuy’s CEO. “Bitcoins are convenient and easy to use and although relatively new, the virtual currency has a lot of growth potential.”

BitX CEO Marcus Swanepoel added: "This integration is ... a big milestone in terms of opening up the wider bitcoin ecosystem in Africa, and should have a strong positive effect on the broader industry."

During checkout, buyers on bidorbuy can select the bitcoin payment method, alongside other payment methods enabled by the seller. BitX then provides the buyer with a unique bitcoin wallet address and the real-time exchange rate, which is guaranteed for 10 minutes.

The buyer and seller both get immediate notification of a successful payment and the funds instantly get converted from bitcoin to rands, which the seller then receives in their bidorbuy account.

The products on bidorbuy will still be listed in rands and sellers will receive the appropriate rand amount, regardless of the existing bitcoin exchange rate.

Advantages of enabling bitcoin payments:

• Low processing fees compared to other payment mechanisms
  
• Transactions are guaranteed and not subject to costly chargebacks
  
• It is one of the fastest ways to make payments
  
• It is international, with Bitcoin available to buyers in most markets

"Bitcoin has the potential to grow and become a truly universal digital currency as more and more people become aware of it, get accustomed to it and start using it," said Jonker. "This partnership between BitX and bidorbuy plays an important part in popularising and spreading bitcoin in South Africa and on the African continent."