Bitwage, a digital asset payroll service allowing companies to pay their employees in cryptocurrency has partnered with Texas-based payroll and Human Relations firm, Simply Efficient HR, to give more firms the ability to pay their employees with cryptocurrency.
The newfound partnership will allow Bitwage customers (companies in the US and Puerto Rico) to fund their W2 payrolls and payroll taxes in Ethereum (ETH) and Bitcoin (BTC). Before the partnership, Bitwage could only facilitate payments to contractors who conduct their own tax deductions.
As stated by Bitwage’s CEO Jonathan Chester:
“Previously you could pay contractors, but with W2 employees you would have to figure out how to fulfill your fiat obligations to the government regarding the tax processing.”
Now, the payroll service lets companies pay employees on salary with crypto, thanks to a feature that converts the tax portion to dollars so that it can be paid out to the current tax system in the US. Also, the feature allows employees to choose what percentage of their wages they want to be paid in crypto or fiat currency.
Bitwage Company Clients
Currently, Bitwage is staffed by 11 full-time employees, some of whom choose to receive up to 15% of their wages in crypto. Also, Bitwage has 45 active company clients and a user base of 20,000, in which they hope to expand significantly with the Simply Efficient HR partnership and new payroll tax feature.
According to Chester, about half of Bitwage’s existing customers are crypto-related companies, while the other half simply use the service as a cross-border payment solution. Furthermore, Chester believes Bitwage’s new product will be beneficial to companies with large crypto-reserves.
A company that’s been piloting Bitwage’s new product since November 2018 is the peer-to-peer exchange company Paxful.
As put by Paxful’s controller, Hayel Abbassi:
“Bitwage bridges the gap between bitcoin and the traditional finance system. Paxful simply sends bitcoin to an address, and our employees receive net checks with the proper federal and state taxes withheld.”
Bitwage, Revolutionizing Payroll
Bitwage is a revolutionary crypto-related business with a mission to push the adoption of cryptocurrencies by allowing any kind of company to pay their employees in crypto. The crypto payroll service they provide is particularly popular with the ever-growing remote workforce that has employees spread across the world.
Bitwage was founded in 2014, where early on they raised $1 million in venture capital, $760,000 of which came from Draper Associates in 2015. Currently, Bitwage is processing $2.5 million in monthly volume and is funded solely by revenues.
The company is looking to receive further funding in expansion capital from venture capitalists. Just recently, Draper, who previously invested in Bitwage, invested $1.25 million in OpenNode, a competing Bitcoin payments startup utilizing the lightning network.
Would you prefer to be paid in cryptocurrency or fiat currency? Let us know in the comment section below.
