You may find this annoying, but I’m not including links to the platforms and services I mention here. A small gesture to the reader, to clarify these aren’t being sponsored or promoted in any way.

Paying Rent & Other Invoices

What do you do with your bank account? Me, I use it for paying invoices, rent, insurance, and other relatives.

The one issue I have not yet been able to address is when the recipient requires a deposit from a bank account under MY name. Or, otherwise known as “doesn’t allow 3rd party deposits.” A good example of this is funding a bitcoin exchange platform. As of yet I don’t have a solution for it. For everything else, there’s —

Bitwala

My go to for bank transfers. The fees vary based on the country and fiat the currency funds are being sent to, but often more attractive than the alternatives when it comes to international transfers. Just like with a traditional bank transfer, Bitwala uses SWIFT transfers and generate a bitcoin invoice for me to pay to fund the transaction. It then takes a few days to get to the recipient (depending on the receiving account).

Hold-backs: the fees for some currencies are quite high and some non-crypto transfer providers (I’ve been using XendPay to supplement where Bitwala was falling behind) have better offers.

Bitwage

Bitwage is basically an HR/wage management platform. I’ve only just signed up with them so a full review of functionality still to come, but the proposition seems very interesting: allow clients to pay using their own currency (the platform says they’ll provide a bank account for deposits), then get my payment on the other end in bitcoin. Bitwage also hosts a gig economy marketplace for hiring freelancers.

Hold-backs: the fee structure and conversion rates they are using aren’t quite clear to me and I was unsuccessful in getting a clear answer from the support/founders over email. I hope to gain a bit more insight into this when I actually use the platform later this month.