United States merchant services provider and payment processing firm Aliant Payments will be paying each of its employees part of their compensation package in cryptocurrency.

In a press release on Oct. 16, Aliant said that the offer reflected a desire that employees become invested customers in the shift to digital currency.

Aliant’s evolving crypto payments processing solution

Aliant launched its crypto processing system for merchants, dubbed CryptoBucks, back in 2017 and developed a proprietary, fully compliant solution in July 2018 to process crypto payments, converting them to USD, and offering merchants next day payouts.

In a statement, Aliant CEO Eric Brown proposed that:

“Adoption happens when you’re able to earn cryptocurrency, and then go on to spend it.”

Brown further underscored that with the inclusion of cryptocurrency into employee compensation packages, each member of the Aliant team will have “a vested interest in cryptocurrency not just as something they work on in the office.”

Merchant solutions and in-house employee adoption

Alongside Aliant, other industry firms have been working to diversify crypto processing solutions for merchants.

Blockchain technology firm Bitfury Group has launched e-commerce software for merchants and several other tools — including an open-source Bitcoin (BTC) wallet and a hardware payments terminal — in a bid to drive wider adoption of Bitcoin’s off-chain scalability layer called Lightning Network.

Meanwhile, workplace initiatives to drive crypto adoption among employees include the recent move by Big Four audit firm Deloitte to enable staff to pay for canteen purchases using a mobile Bitcoin wallet.