Remote work has become a permanent fixture in most organizations today. With it, many companies are looking to take advantage and expand their horizons.
With workers no longer required to sit in the office all day long, there’s no need for companies to limit themselves to local hires. And that’s especially helpful in today’s economy, where skilled workers in many areas are in extremely short supply.
Nowadays, it’s not uncommon for a software firm based in Dallas to hire developers based in far-flung areas of the world such as Europe, Asia or Africa. The world is their oyster, and yet, there remains one challenge to overcome — making sure that the global workforce gets paid in a timely fashion, with minimum hassle.
That’s the challenge that Alex Bouaziz, co-founder and CEO of Deel, is determined to tackle, and he’s doing it in a way that’s safe for employers concerned about compliance. With Deel, companies can pay using the method that suits them best, and their contractors or employees get to receive their salary in a way that suits them — be it the local currency, crypto or something else. Deel takes care of all of the compliance requirements, so employers can rest assured the people they hire aren’t tax dodgers or something worse.
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Bouaziz told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster that hiring abroad has never been easy.
Previously, companies would either open a local office in the country they were hiring in and absorb all of the expense that goes along with that, or they use a local agency that took a good chunk of the employee’s salary. They could also hire someone as a 1099.
“But in France, we’ve honestly got no understanding of what is a 1099,” Bouaziz said. “So that’s what we wanted to tackle, helping the CEOs of companies to hire people across the world compliantly, while giving an amazing experience to every person they hire.”
On the compliance side, Deel handles all of the documentation the employer might require to ensure they can hire someone legally as a 1099 or a W-2, including the localization of contracts, compliance, collecting tax numbers, invoicing and so on.
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“We do this in a super-cool way that makes the flow super compliant from an [anti-money-laundering] perspective,” Bouaziz said. “By doing this, we’re enabling companies to think about talent and the quality of that talent versus things like restrictions.”
Paying Workers the Way They Want
Payment flexibility is another key advantage. Agreeing on a payment method for internationally-based workers has traditionally been a major pain point. Deel solves that in the best possible way, Bouaziz said, by enabling the employer to pay however they want and then ensuring the worker gets their salary however they prefer it.
Deel can deliver payments to local bank accounts, to digital wallets such as PayPal, Payoneer and Revolv or even pay directly in crypto. Bouaziz revealed he’s an avid believer in crypto and that it was his goal from the very first day to ensure it was an option on the Deel platform, though he said the company had to be cautious about introducing it to ensure the banks it works with were happy.
See more: Bakkt, BringMeThat.com Bring Crypto to Gig Economy
Luckily, Deel’s biggest banking partner happens to be Morgan Stanley, which also happens to work with Coinbase, one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S. So implementing crypto payments was easy to do, Bouaziz said. To date, Deel supports a number of cryptocurrencies, including bitcoin, ethereum and, more recently, USD Coin.
Bouaziz insisted there are many advantages to offering global workers payment in crypto including speed and cost. He pointed out that many remote workers are knowledge workers, which means they probably don’t live paycheck-to-paycheck and are happy to invest a portion of their salary into cryptocurrency each month.
“It is a matter of flexibility,” he said. “From the employer’s standpoint, it gives them the flexibility to say, you do what is right for you. It is a big leap from what people had before, when they were forced into a specific payment method.”
Further reading: TaskRabbit on How Instant Disbursements Can Create Freelancer Loyalty for Gig Platforms
A Global Shift in Hiring
Bouaziz said Deel’s payments platform has been well received, and it’s growing fast. He said the company boasts more than 6,000 clients, ranging from small and midsize businesses to big enterprises such as Shopify, Coinbase, CloudFlare and even some airlines he declined to name.
That is proof, Bouaziz said, that more companies are realizing they need to have a global talent-hiring strategy, which has become more vital than ever with the COVID-19 pandemic and the Great Resignation creating labor shortages in many parts of the world. U.S. firms’ international hires are growing at a rate of about 20%, month to month, he said.
Meanwhile, other companies have been forced into hiring international workers, Bouaziz said.
“Because of COVID, your best engineer goes back to Croatia, so what are you going to do? He’s your best engineer, so you have to find a solution,” he said. “So that accelerates the need for a product like ours. What we’re doing is eliminating one of the key barriers to really embracing that global workforce model.”
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