An official from financial services company ZipZap this past weekend noted at the Bitcoin Expo London that commencing in early 2014, they would be adding thousands of cash-to-bitcoin locations starting in January 2014.
What that means is that consumers can go to about 25,000 different general stores in the United Kingdom and 240,000 stores in Russia and exchange fiat currency for bitcoin. This, of course, is only applicable to stores that do currency exchange and lottery tickets that are already connected and using ZipZap services. It should be noted that there are other countries in which this will be possible, though unclear which.
This information comes from a likeley attendee of the event who posted the news Tuesday morning on Reddit. With regard to VAT — it will not be applicable for these sorts of transactions, according to the poster of the thread linked above.
newsBTC has reached out to ZipZap for confirmation and official comment on the matter. We will update you accordingly.