By Nikila Sri-Kumar (@NikSk), Product Manager

Coinbase payout screen within the Premise app.

Payments is one of Premise’s biggest and most interesting challenges. We currently operate networks in 34 countries, and when deciding where and how quickly we can launch a new network, one of the most important things we consider is how quickly we can pay our contributors. Quick payments are essential to maintaining our contributors’ trust.

One of the payment methods we’re most optimistic about is Bitcoin, which not only improves access and immediacy of payment for people in low and moderate income brackets, but also reduces the fees associated with cross-border money transfer. For all of these reasons and more, we’re thrilled to announce the official integration of Coinbase into our app.

We’re currently using Coinbase to pay our contributors in Venezuela and India, and this integration gives us the flexibility and footprint to more rapidly scale our payments infrastructure to new countries using Bitcoin. To date, we’ve paid out more than 332 bitcoin (~$125,000 USD) since we began experimenting with the digital currency.

Currently, we pay more than 90% of our contributors in Venezuela using Bitcoin, up from 10% in September 2015. The integration reduces the time it takes for us to pay our contributors from weekly to nearly instantaneously.

We currently use 15 different payments providers globally, about half of which are integrated in-app. We simply can’t launch in a new country until we have an efficient way of paying contributors. We’re optimistic about both Bitcoin’s future in the developing world and its potential to one day serve as a universal payment method for Premise.