This week, KnC Miner began offering each of its employees Xapo Debit Cards for salary payouts. So far, around 30 pecent of its employees are participating.
KnC Miner is a bitcoin mining company, and therefore, most of its employees already have their own selection of bitcoin wallets, cold storage solutions and investments. The company decided to use Xapo Debit Cards for its convenience, since Xapo Debit Cards can be used anywhere that accepts MasterCard or Visa.
“A large percentage of our staff are real Bitcoin aficionados and of course they already own bitcoins and operate their selection of wallets, cold storage solutions etc.,” Nanok Bie of KnC Miner told Bitcoin Magazine. “Some have also invested in Bitcoin via the instrument Bitcoin Tracker One listed on NASDAQ/OMX in Stockholm, issued by a subsidiary to KnC. The Xapo Debit card is just another convenient solution, as it can be used to pay for goods and services anywhere in the world where Visa is accepted.”
Other Options
Since 2014, several bitcoin debit cards have been introduced in Australia and the United States. The most recent bitcoin debit card launch was the Bit-X debit card, which allows anyone to pay with bitcoin at Visa-accepting outlets or point-of-sale machines. Despite a long list of options, KnC Miner chose to work with Xapo due to its insured vault storage and convenient services.
“We feel the debit card solution is an interesting ‘bridge’ between the current paradigm and the bitconomy of the future,” Bie told Bitcoin Magazine. “This is a beta program and we are partly doing it for research purposes, and we’ve already collected interesting data as many of our staff have been using these cards for months now. Choosing Xapo was an easy choice as they were the first to offer a comprehensive set of services connected to a debit card, and there’s also the option of using their insured ‘vault,’ all easily accessible in their mobile app.”
Offering
The company offered all of its staff and employees Xapo Debit Cards, and those who accepted the offer are starting to have parts of their salaries paid through Xapo Debit Cards.
But the company is based in Stockholm, Sweden, and its local government has restricted the amount of bitcoin withdrawals per day. Because of the heavy regulations in Sweden, KnC employees cannot withdraw all of their salaries at once.
“We offer this service as an opt-in and currently around 30 percent of our staff has accepted the offer, and then they can specify themselves what percentage of their salary should be paid out in bitcoins directly,” Bie said. “Due to Swedish regulations around salaries they cannot immediately convert all of the current salary to bitcoins, but when changes to their salaries are made they can opt-in to receive a part of it in bitcoins.”
KnC Miner is taking this opportunity to test the efficiency of bitcoin debit cards and whether it could be a convenient payout solution for large companies in the bitcoin industry.