Hot To Get A 41% Discount On Airline Tickets In Zimbabwe…

This is a Guest Post and does not reflect the thoughts and opinions of Techzim. We have a strong filtering process of what makes it to our blog and are confident that you’ll enjoy the article below.

This guest article was authored by Panashe Tapera, a financial tech enthusiast and is entrenched in the cryptocurrency community.

The price of bitcoin in Zimbabwe is significantly higher than it is in other places around the world, so if you want to buy something outside Zimbabwe that has a similar price in Zimbabwe, then you can take advantage of the difference in the price of bitcoin between the two countries, to get a discount that is proportional to the difference in the price of bitcoin.This is what we call in the industry: “taking advantage of arbitrage”.

This is what we call in the industry: “taking advantage of arbitrage”.

I decided to ‘take advantage of arbitrage’ to get a discount on an airline ticket recently.

My colleagues will be attending the Texas Bitcoin Conference at the end of this month so I decided to see how much money I can save if I ordered the ticket for one of them in a different country and then make the payment in Zimbabwe while using bitcoin as the rails to move the money. Because of the difference in the price of bitcoin between the US and Zimbabwe, I saved 41%.

At the time when I made the payment, the price of bitcoin on Golix (Zimbabwe’s crptocurrency exchange) was $8199.99 and on Coinbase it was $4840.

Here’s how I did it

• • I called the South African Airways office in South Africa (+27 11 978 1111) and made my booking over the phone. I told them that I just wanted to book now and pay later. When you do this, they will email you a booking confirmation and then they give you 24 hours to make the payment as well as the whole amount you should pay.
  • I then called the South African Airways office in Zimbabwe (+263 8677 702 702), and told them that I have a booking that I want to pay for using bank transfer. They emailed me their banking information.
  • I then bought 0.2494 BTC Coinbase at a price of $4,840. The total cost of buying that bitcoin was
    $1207.09
  • I then sold the bitcoin on Golix at a price of $8,199 price to get $2,045
  • After selling the bitcoin, I had $2,045 in my USD wallet so I had that money sent straight from my
    Golix wallet to the bank account that the Zimbabwe South African Airways office sent me.
  • I did all this within an hour and without having to leave the office.

However, before trying it out you should keep in mind that:

• This may not work with any airline. I only tried this with South African Airways. If you have done
  this with a different airline, or if you have an airline you want me to try for a second colleague who
  is making a similar trip, please let me know in the comments section below.
• A booking is only reserved for 24 hours. If you make your payment via Golix, Golix will send the payment as a bank transfer which also takes a day to go through in Zimbabwe. I got around that by sending the South African Airways Zimbabwe office a proof of payment and then asking them to hold on to my booking until the transfer went through. If you plan to do this too you may want to first inform the Golix team using a subject like: “Proof of payment for SAA ticket”. A proof of payment was easy and quick for me to get because I work for Golix.
• The price of bitcoin is volatile and there is no guarantee that you will always save 41% (your mileage may vary).

If you have ‘taken advantage of the arbitrage’ to get a discount on any other product or service, please let me know in the comments section below..