Bitcoin payroll services startup Bitwage has raised $760,000 in seed funding.
Contributing to the round were Orange Fab accelerator (a venture investment arm of French telecommunications giant Orange), Draper Associates, Halsey Minor’s Cloud Money Ventures, Max Keiser’s Bitcoin Capital, private investor Saeed Amidi, BnkToTheFuture and others.
The funding will go towards expanding and streamlining its payroll operations, the startup said on its blog. It reports transacting over $1.7 million since November 2014.
There has been a recent renewal of interest in bitcoin payroll services, a seemingly unexpected and random phenomenon as bitcoin shows few signs of proliferating as a currency adopted by the masses.
In September, it was reported that bitcoin Payments startup PEY raised €300,000 ($339,800) in seed funding to develop a bitcoin-based payroll service.
The companies and their investors are hoping to jumpstart bitcoin's ubiquity as a currency by putting it in the pockets of consumers from the start of the spending cycle.
Bitwage says that it allows employers or employees to pay/get paid in bitcoin without having the other party sign up. The solution is touted as most useful for international payments, which are typically complicated by currency exchange fees and lengthy turnover times.
The startup lists Google, Microsoft, Uber and General Electric among several whose employees use its solution.
