Bitcoin payments provider BitPay recently announced a new service: “BitPay Send”, a neat new way for businesses to pay employees, contractors, customers and vendors all at once with cryptocurrency.
Bitpay describes the new service as “ideal for companies looking for a fast, efficient, and secure way to send mass payouts anywhere in the world, on any day of the week, and at any time”.
According to BitPay CEO Stephen Pair, this service is the company's way of responding to consumer demand, commenting:
Blockchain payment adoption is growing because it offers an easy way to send and receive payments on a global scale. With [this] new service, companies don't need to buy, own or manage cryptocurrency, while the recipients receive payment more efficiently and at a reduced cost.
The ins and outs
BitPay Send claims to provide businesses an alternative to crypto payroll services such as BitWage, by letting companies perform an assortment of payment functions including:
Payroll
customer cash-out requests
contractor payments
reward issuance and;
settlements with marketplace sellers
The setup is conveniently easy, much like any sign up process. Yet, the important things to note are that recipients of the funds will need to have a BitPay ID and cryptocurrency wallet to receive payment, and that companies are charged a 1% settlement fee. As the payment is in cryptocurrency rather than the recipient's local currency, BitPay takes no foreign exchange fee.
How's it fairing?
AdGate Media was one of the first companies to use BitPay Send. AdGate’s President, Dan Sapozhnikov, expressed his support for the service enabling him to leverage mass payments to its affiliates across the world:
We have lots of affiliates who wanted to be paid in Bitcoin, especially those who are based outside North America and Europe where access to bank accounts is difficult. One of our biggest challenges is that we did not want to buy and hold crypto and having BitPay manage that risk was an important factor in choosing BitPay Send. The BitPay team worked with us on integration and there was minimal training since pushing a button is all we need to do when we are ready to pay.
Sapozhnikov also added:
With BitPay Send, we are able to get our affiliates paid in a matter of minutes and not days.
As one of the oldest and most respected bitcoin companies in the world, Bitpay has already raised $72.5 million in investment. Considering BitPay Send's so-far positive reception, who's to say what’s next as they continue working to transform how businesses and people send, receive, and store money around the world.
No word yet on whether tax reporting compliant with Australian laws applies to the use of Bitpay's payroll service. Currently Australia has some services like Get Paid In Bitcoin of which the level of uptake is unclear.