Remote and Stripe Offer Stablecoin Payments for Contract Workers

Payroll/HR platform Remote says its clients can now pay contract workers using stablecoins.

The new offering, launching initially for businesses in the U.S., allows companies to pay contractors in 69 countries with the USDC stablecoin, according to a Tuesday (Dec. 17) news release.

“One of the biggest hurdles companies face when hiring on international talent is providing fast, flexible, and reliable payments around the world,” Remote CEO and Co-founder Job van der Voort said in the announcement. “With the introduction of stablecoin payouts via Stripe, we’re adding a feature that has been highly requested by our customers, enabling them to pay contractors how they prefer, while maintaining the compliance and simplicity Remote is known for.”

According to the release, the new capability lets companies pay contract workers securely and near-instantaneously, whole Remote provides compliance at home and abroad. Contractor can pick a new withdrawal method and add their Base Network Wallet Address to get payments in USDC, while their employer will be billed in U.S. dollars.

“Contractor management is one of the fastest-growing capabilities of the Remote platform as businesses shift toward tapping global talent pools and adopting more flexible workforce models,” the release said.

“Stablecoin payments complement Remote’s powerful automation features for onboarding, invoicing, and paying contractors in minutes around the world, making it easy to manage and pay all their talent from a single dashboard.”

The launch comes at a time when stablecoins appear to be gaining momentum as a cross-border payment method, as covered here last week.

“Traditional cross-border payments are notorious for high fees, slow processing times and opaque intermediaries,” PYMNTS wrote.

“Stablecoins offer a compelling alternative by allowing near-instantaneous transfers, significantly lower costs and enhanced transparency through blockchain technology.”

Still, the utility of digital coins has been hampered by the difficulty in moving funds between stablecoins and fiat currencies — a gap that on-ramp and off-ramp services at some financial institutions hope to fill.

“For banks, this functionality highlights the emergence of a potentially stark choice: adapt to a changing payments landscape or risk disintermediation,” PYMNTS wrote.

Meanwhile, research by PYMNTS Intelligence has shown that using cryptocurrencies to make cross-border payments could be the winning use case that the industry has been searching for. The research found that blockchain-based cross-border solutions, stablecoins in particular, are being embraced by companies hoping for a better way to transact and expand internationally.