After expanding services in Europe earlier this year, bitcoin payroll and wage payment service provider Bitwage announced its official launch in the UK on Monday.
Also read: Bitwage Launches New Functionality for European Customers
Bitwage’s Official Launch in the UK
Bitwage
offers solutions for remote workers to receive wages in a variety of currencies including bitcoin. Using the service, workers can get paid in bitcoin without having to ask each employer to pay in the cryptocurrency or sign up with Bitwage. They simply give the employers Bitwage’s bank account details to receive payments in.
Bitwage claims to have over 13,000 registered workers and have processed over $21.6 million in international wages. Users can invoice employers or clients in the United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), and the European Union (EU). Wages received can be split into any ratio between different bank accounts and bitcoin wallets.
On Monday, the company announced the official launch of their services in the UK, stating:
We are now able to offer workers anywhere in the world the ability to receive wages from companies in the UK through local banking partners. This means that our workers can receive wages through Faster Payments, Bacs, Chaps or Swift into local UK GBP bank accounts.
Bacs, Faster Payments, and Chaps Now Supported
Bitwage founder and president Jonathan Chester told Bitcoin.com that the company has been beta testing this service. He explained that although the ability to receive wages in British pounds (GBP) existed previously, it was not done locally and was never publicly launched. Without local UK partners, the service was not cost-effective. Chester detailed:
Before this, we had a banking partner with GBP correspondent accounts in Ireland that could receive Chaps, but not Faster Payments or Bacs. This was a costly solution for potential clients in the UK, so there was very little usage. We have now been working with these same customers during the beta testing of our new local UK services.
Chaps is the UK’s same-day high-value payment system, currently used by 26 direct participants including the Bank of England and over 5,000 indirect participants. Payments are transferred over Swift and settled intraday in central bank funds. In 2016 Chap’s volumes reached a record 39 million transactions, worth £75.6 trillion.
Bacs is responsible for the clearing and settlement of UK automated payment methods, direct debit and Bacs direct credit. The company processed 6.22 billion transactions to UK bank accounts in 2016, worth £4.8 trillion. Faster Payments is a UK banking initiative which uses the Bacs system to reduce payment times between different banks’ customer accounts from three working days to a few hours. While Chaps focuses on same-day service for high-value transactions, Faster Payments is tailored to the much larger number of smaller payments.
Bitwage’s Growing List of Services
In April, Bitcoin.com reported on Bitwage launching unique IBANs for users receiving wages in the European Union. With Monday’s launch in the UK, 
employers can pay in US dollars, British pounds, and euros. In addition, Bitwage can accept Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, Swiss Francs, and Japanese yen.
Payouts to the workers are far more diverse and are done on the same or next day. Currencies supported include bitcoin, ether, and litecoin, as well as the US dollar, the euro, the British pound, the Brazilian Real, the Philippine peso, the Mexican peso, the Argentine peso, the Indian rupee, the Vietnamese dong, the Nigerian naira, and the Ukrainian hryvnia.
Would you use Bitwage to receive your wages? Let us know in the comments section below.
Images courtesy of Shutterstock, Chaps, Bacs, Faster Payments, and Bitwage
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