Founded 2013 | Website www.bitwage.com | |
Industry Financial Services, Technology Founders John Lindsay, Jonathan Chester Headquarters San Francisco; offices in Dublin and Amsterdam Key people John Lindsay (CEO), Jonathan Chester (President), Paolo Huelgas (BSA/AML Compliance Officer) | ||
Bitwage is a bitcoin payroll and international wage payment service allowing users to be paid or pay wages (wages in bitcoin, local currencies, and/or commodities). Employees and employers can use Bitwage to reduce costs, increase visibility into the payment process, and increase the speed of international wage payments. Bitwage is located in San Francisco, California.
Contents
History
Founded in 2013 by John Lindsay and Jonathan Chester, Bitwage was originally created as a pure bitcoin payroll services for employers in July 2014. In November of 2014, Bitwage released a way for employees and freelancers to receive their wages in Bitcoin without requiring their employers or clients to sign up. Eventually, John and Jonathan realized that a large percentage of their volume were coming from a small percentage of their users. These were all international users. So in February 2015, Bitwage launched their international payroll services. Bitwage currently helps companies payout to their distributed workforces and helps employees, freelancers and contractors receive their wages all over the world, including Philippines, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.
Bitwage was part of the Plug and Play Financial Technology Accelerator and is currently part of Orange Fab Accelerator, an accelerator run by Orange Silicon Valley, which is a subsidiary of Orange S.A., France's largest telecommunications company. Bitwage competed as a finalist in BBVA's 2015 Open Talent Competition in New York. In August 2015, Bitwage performed over $1 million in payroll transactions. According to PC Magazine, Bitwage has processed more than $4.5 billion worth of payments to date. August 1st, 2015, Bitwage officially launches in Brazil. In December, Bitwage officially launched in India.
Services and Features
Bitcoin Payroll Services. Bitwage offers employers the ability to pay employees in bitcoin and employees/freelancers the ability to receive wages bitcoin without their employer or clients signing up. It works as follows: Bitwage gives user a bank account number, user tells their employer to send any percentage of their payroll deposit to that number. Bitwage sends user bitcoin the day after deposit.
International Payroll Services. Bitwage makes international payroll payments faster, cheaper and easier by leveraging bitcoin and blockchain technology, while still enabling employers and their workforce to send and receive local currency. For instance, through a partnership with Coins.ph, Bitwage allows Philippine peso payouts from the United States through various outputs, including bank transfers, mobile payments, atm withdrawal and cash delivery in under 24 hours. Through a partnership with Xapo, Bitwage offers a debit card that allows users to receive their wages into a VISA debit card that can be spent anywhere VISA is accepted, including ATMs and Point of Sale systems. Through a partnership with Bitreserve, Bitwage offers a cloud savings account where users living almost anywhere in the world, can store their wages in any of 20 local currencies and 4 commodities. Through the Bitwage android app, employees and freelancers can manage their payrolls and transfer funds between their cloud savings and debit cards.
Companies are able to offer the Bitwage Bitcoin Payroll and International Payroll services as value added services to their customers via their API.
Funding and Awards
On November 19, 2015, Bitwage announced the closing of a $760,000 seed round. The round was led by Tim Draper's Draper associates and included funding from Orange Silicon Valley through their Orange Fab Accelerator, Cloud Money Ventures, Saeed Amidi (early investor in Dropbox, PayPal and Lending Club), Bitcoin Capital and BnkToTheFuture (an online investment platform).