What is Bitwage? Jobs and Crypto Payments for Remote Workers

• Bitwage Jobs and Salaries

Bitwage proudly displays the phrase Jobs and Salaries for International Outsourcing Firms atop its homepage. The company is not only a facilitator of cross-border payments for clients, their employees, and contractors. It’s also an advanced job search site, especially focused on the needs of remote workers. Here’s a closer look at the advantages that Bitwage jobs and salaries may avail to you.

Bitwage Jobs and Salaries

Bitwage’s operations boast three specific areas of expertise:

1. Helping remote workers locate desirable job assignments, worldwide
2. Enabling employers to pay remote workers rapidly, with low transaction costs
3. Equipping remote workers to receive their wages and salaries in any of twenty-five different fiat currencies, four cryptocurrencies, and four precious metals

Remote workers don’t even need their employer to sign up for Bitwage in order to receive part or all of their pay in cryptocurrency service.

Employment Search

As of December 22, 2018, 19,500 remote workers are subscribed to Bitwage’s employment search algorithm. Currently, more than 31,000 job openings are listed on the website. Employers can quickly create a profile and post new jobs, just as easily as workers can post their personal info and begin their job search.

According to the copy on the Bitwage website,

Machine-learning algorithms send every job posted to social media (based on your skills) straight to your inbox. Find jobs yourself from our job board that sources the remote jobs posted on Twitter, Reddit, and other platforms.

More than $34 million in payments have been made to remote workers since Bitwage went live several years ago.

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A Piece of the Action

Roaming around the Bitwage Jobs pages, I found their recruiting agreement. It says that if you find a job using their service, you must agree to be paid via Bitwage. Further, it states that 10 percent of your first-year’s wages will be paid to Inwage and the recruiter that helped you find a job.

Employment services have used this same fee-based model for decades, so this isn’t necessarily a shocker. However, looking for a similar job at a no-commission job search site might be a better alternative, depending on your circumstances. You can still use Bitwage to receive your wages, even if you didn’t use its employment search to find your job.

Wiring money internationally can be very expensive and, ironically, also very slow. This time value of money issue negatively impacts businesses, individuals, employers, and employees. However, according to Bitwage, their use of blockchain technology helps streamline cross-border wage and payroll transactions. In some cases, transmissions that would take up to fifteen days can now be completed the same- or next day using Bitwage’s payroll service.

With Bitwage, your physical location simply does not matter. You can work anywhere, invoice your remote employer via Bitwage and get paid the same or next day. You get to choose which fiat currencies, precious metals or cryptos you’d like to be paid in, then also look into virtual offices as they are a great way of using a different postal address if you run your business from home. There are virtual offices available in great cities like Glasgow so you can have an impressive looking postal address and all of that extra privacy for a small cost so it’s very much worthwhile.

Divvie up Your Paycheck

Once you’ve signed up for Bitwage, you can use the distributions feature to allocate how much of your wages go where:

1. Bank to bank: This is the simplest Bitwage transfer. 
2. Cloud savings account (Bitwage Cloud): Allows your wages to be saved in any of 25 currencies, four cryptos (XBT, ETH, LTC, and VOX)  or four metals (gold, silver, platinum, and palladium). You can withdraw funds via debit card, using the Visa network. You can also make purchases with Bitcoin using the same debit card.
3. Bitcoin network option (Bitcoin Blockchain): Receive your wages in Bitcoin.

Think of the flexibility available with the above options. Perhaps you’d like to receive 80 percent of your wages in fiat, depositing them right into your bank account. Maybe you’d prefer to receive 10 percent of it in Bitcoin and 10 percent in silver. Your cloud savings account will receive your fiat, Bitcoin, and silver deposits (you do not need to open a new saving account to use the cloud savings account feature). Maybe you’d like to receive all of your wages in Bitcoin. Bitwage will certainly accommodate you, and the transaction will be completed by next day, at the latest.

This aspect of the company’s services appears to be worth its weight in gold (Bitcoin?). You can instruct Bitwage to process three (or more) transactions simultaneously, thus saving you time and hassle.

Fee Structures

Per the Bitwage website:

There are no fees for our base products.

Nevertheless, you’re still going to pay the currency, crypto or precious metals spread when you receive your payment. For example, if your employer pays you 1,000 USD and you elect to receive the payment in Bitcoin (XBP), you’ll be charged a commission of 2.50% above the mid-market rate (MMR) for the coin (this MMR-based surcharged percentage will fluctuate according to the size of your payment).

If you receive the same 1,000 USD in Bitcoin via Coinbase or Local Bitcoins, your surcharge will be 4.00 percent or 4.50 percent, respectively. Non-premium Bitwage clients will receive their Bitcoin payment the next day. Conversely, Coinbase can take up to 7 days for payment and Local Bitcoins up to 15 days.

The base (non-premium) version of Bitwage allows for you to receive your wages in one currency account. Wage recipients are also charged 1 percent for each deposit into any of twenty-five local currencies.

Movin’ on Up

Bitwage does offer a premium service. This add-on enables additional flexibility for you, including same-day delivery of funds. Premium also enables you to receive your wages into any of 25 different currency accounts, crypto, and metals. There are various fees involved for premium, depending on the services you desire. For example, say you’re an employer who wants to fund your payroll (for multiple workers). Here are the fees for going the ACH and credit card route, respectively:

Funding Payrolls with ACH Debit: 0.50% + .50 USD per payroll charged to Employer

Funding Payrolls with Credit Card: 3.50% +. 30 USD per payroll charged to Employer

Clearly, funding payroll via ACH is the cost-effective option. Yet, it’s always a great idea to have backup systems such as a credit card, just in case the need arises.

In the End

All told, Bitwage looks to be a very viable g0-to payment system for both employers and their remote workers. Transaction fees are reasonable and payments happen quickly. Workers and employers also enjoy the flexibility of currency choice and payment distribution. Compared to its key competitors, Bitwage appears to be the leader in cost-effective, cross-border payment technology. 

All data based on the Bitwage website as of December 22, 2018.