New-age Desi tech companies use cryptocurrency for pay, perks

CHENNAI: New-age tech companies are satiating their young workforce’s growing desire for digital money by using a workaround to pay either part of their salary, bonus or other incentives in cryptocurrency. For employers, this is a quick and easy transaction, while for employees the lure is the possibility of the crypto appreciating in value.
There are two approaches taken by employers. One is to register their entities in crypto-friendly nations and pay their employees in cryptocurrency to avoid any legal or tax hurdles. The second is to record the payment as a rupee transaction in their books, but to facilitate the conversion of the rupee into cryptocurrency.
An executive from a gateway company, which facilitates payments for cryptocurrency through banking channels, said, “Generally, we use a stable coin/cryptocurrency like Tether (USDt) to pay salaries. Employees can cash them out immediately or hold on to them.” Since Tether is pegged to the dollar, a systems engineer with a pay package of $60,000 per annum will get 60,000 USDt.