A Touch Media 4 machine displaying "The first crypto vending machine in Africa"

The challenge

What they needed

Crypto payments in South African retail are mostly demos. The question was whether a vending machine — unattended, and unforgiving about failed payments — could take a Bitcoin Lightning payment and dispense reliably, in the real world.

What we did

The approach

  1. Used the Touch Media 4, whose full-screen interface could carry a payment flow more complex than a keypad allows.

  2. Built a custom application in-house to bridge the machine and MoneyBadger’s payment rails.

  3. Designed the flow down to four steps: tap, select, scan and pay, dispense.

  4. Installed it in Stellenbosch — our own home town, where we could support it properly while it proved itself.

The outcome

What came of it

  • Africa’s first true crypto-payments-enabled vending machine, in production rather than in a lab.
  • Editorial coverage from The African Startup Magazine.
  • A payment integration we now understand end-to-end and can repeat.

Related

Want something like this?

Tell us about the space, the product and the audience. That's how every one of these started.