The mass adoption of blockchain and cryptocurrency would never come if we do nothing. This is the price that early adopters and project founders must be ready to pay as there be huge returns when the technology we are building becomes an everybody's thing. I got a mail yesterday from the founder of TATCOIN, an African inspired token built on the ETH blockchain and one of the contents was the readiness of his team to ensure the use of TATCOIN in Point of Sale (POS) terminal.
Boom! my mind raced immediately I got read that line and nothing else literally mattered in the mail anymore. I imagined HIVE and Hive tokens being the medium of payments in POS across the world. I decided to make some research on the utilization of Card payment systems with crypto and the google search results were shocking as I spotted a mention of Nigeria.
It was interesting to see that as far back as 2018, there was already a step into using POS to make purchases in Bitcoin. The project was powered by Pundix, an Indonesian cryptocurrency and payments company for Joetech Systems Ltd in Nigeria.
Indonesian cryptocurrency and payments company Pundix has introduced a point of sale terminal at a shop in Nigeria, allowing people in the West African country to make purchases using cryptocurrency, including bitcoin. - source
That was an early and smart move to the adoption of cryptocurrency in Nigeria for commercial activities even at a time that there were open statement by the Central Bank of Nigeria warning them against the trading and acquisition of cryptocurrencies.
The POS capable of allowing a payment for product/Service was tested to be operational by Pundix' business development manager and was even broadcaster in a Tweet.
Michael Lawal, business development manager at Pundix, explains how the new payment platform works, at Joetech Systems Ltd in Nigeria. “I have 0.01 BTC and I am going to make a transaction of 200 Naira (Nigerian currency),” Lawal said, in a video demonstration, on September 28.
Earlier this year, a multi-Cryptocurrency PoS Device - Eletropay was announced. Eletropay crypto PoS devices was reported to have supported BCH, DASH, BTC, LTC and Wechat Pay and Alipay as well. There was a purported sale of 2,600 pieces of the machines so far, across six countries.
This stride is geared to ensure that cryptocurrency payments is made simple and secure “without the need to use mobile phones or computers.” This is just a great step to ensure mass adoption of the technology.
Where do we go from here?
Making transactions with cryptocurrencies are no more business as usual as the Nigerian Stock Exchange Commission had on September 11 officially enlisted cryptocurrencies as trade-able stocks with a move to regulate its trading by individuals and corporate organizations. read full news here.
Point of Sale (POS) business has been a booming and thriving business in Nigeria in 2020. In fact, there barely a 5 minutes driving distance without one in the developed part of the cities in Nigeria.
Point of Sale (POS) is a banking service that allows local debit card holders to make payment for goods and services mostly in a retail location, This service makes use of POS machine to accomplish the transaction. In the last few months since the covid-19 inspired lockdown, I have been using the POS machine for 90% of my cash withdrawals. Even at present when full banking operations have started, I prefer a little fee using the POS than transport myself several kilometres to the bank coupled with their time-wasting drudgery bound services.
This is a great option that could aid the ease if adoption of cryptocurrencies if such development can be looked upon by developers and crypto project developers. Remember, Africa as a whole is a huge market for cryptocurrency and when its embedded in FinTech, then the adoption would have become so easy.
While we are building softwares for crptos, we should not leave behind the hardware integration that would k=make adoption more easy. The move should be seen as key to scaling up cryptocurrency adoption and development in Africa which holds the biggest potential market for crypto.