Since January 2015, Bitwage has been processing international wage payments for workers all over the world, starting in the Philippines. As we have continued to grow, we have seen significant growth on our invoicing solution, which allows workers all over the world to harness the efficiency of the bitcoin blockchain without requiring their client or employer to have to sign up. Over the last year, Bitwage has transferred $5,000,000 in wage payments all over the world with no loses. During this time, Bitwage became insured for errors & omissions and cyberliabilities by a top-rated US insurance carrier with an AM Best Rating of A and above.
With all of our progress over the last year, we are excited to announce the launching of our international payroll processing and invoicing services in Brazil.
According to the world bank, Brazil’s economy has lifted 15% of their people out of poverty since the turn of the century and they’re correcting income inequality, it’s not just benefiting the wealthy. High speed internet access increased an astounding 55% in 2013 alone thanks to Millennials signing up for 3G/4G mobile service. Once online, they began educating themselves to join the global contracting and freelance market.
Starting today, Brazilian contractors and freelancers can invoice in the United States (USD), Eurozone (Euro), Canada (CAD), Australia (AUD), Switzerland (CHF), or the U.K. (GBP), without requiring their clients to sign up. Once the funds are transferred, Bitwage uses the Bitcoin blockchain, a new financial technology that currently manages over $10bn in assets, to transport the value to Brazil nearly instantly. Once in Brazil, the assets are sold into Brazilian real and delivered straight into your local bank account.
An international wire transfer through Brazil’s legacy banking network can take five to fifteen days, cost at least 320 R$ from a 4,000 R$ payment, and it’s not unheard of for transfers to simply get lost. By leveraging the blockchain, we have typically seen transfer speeds into local brazilian bank accounts next day with workers receiving up to 10% more money compared to exchange rates on bank wires during our beta in brazil over the last 5 months.
With thousands of users on Bitwage, international contractors, freelancers and employees can receive payments from freelance marketplaces such as Upwork, Freelancer, Staff, and Toptal, to tech industry giants like FaceBook, Google, and Yahoo. When previously contractors, freelancers and employers were at the whim of their clients or employers to choose a payment system, Bitwage’s frictionless invoicing system gives this choice back to the workers.
How does frictionless invoicing work?
We provide users with domestic accounts in the US and Europe or correspondent accounts for other currencies.
Workers invoice their clients using the banking details provided.
Workers receive their wages next day after deposit.
The company sending the payment does not have to change any of their processes. To them, it looks like they are now just sending a domestic wire transfer, instead of an international one, which happens to save them money on flat fees.
Bitwage is the faster, cheaper, and more reliable solution for international wage processing needs.
With the release of our new launch in Brazil comes also the release of a new referral program for Brazilian workers. For every Brazilian contractor or freelancer referred, the referee will receive 0.50% of all the wage payments that come in through our invoicing system for 6 months. There will be a max payout of 1000 USD a month per referee.
Bitwage is run by Stanford Alumni, Oracle veterans and Blockchain experts. We’ve successfully passed through the due diligence process for investors like Tim Draper’s Draper Associates (early investors in Skype, Tesla, & Twitch) and Orange Silicon Valley through it’s Orange Fab accelerator (subsidiary of Orange, France’s largest telecommunications company), and we have local customer support team to handle complex issues.
Photo by ckturistando on Unsplash
