Buying bitcoin from exchanges can involve lots of hoop-jumping, as customers navigate complex and tedious registration and transaction processes. Some people are now cutting through the whole tangled mess, and having their employers pay them in bitcoin directly.

Wagepoint, a startup based in Waterloo and Nova Scotia, Canada, offers Canadian and US companies an easy way to process payroll online. The firm handles payroll deductions for tax purposes and files all the necessary paperwork electronically. It has processed $120m in payroll payments using traditional fiat currency, but now, a growing percentage of customers are taking advantage of its bitcoin payment services, says CEO Shrad Rao.

“We started it in November 2013. It was a side project,” said Rao, explaining that the firm was interested in bitcoin, and pulled the service together quickly. We didn’t imagine we’d get any uptake,” said the CEO, and initially he was right. Nothing happened during November and December, but then, in January this year, he received his first bitcoin request from a customer, which paid out $2,000 worth of bitcoin in salaries.

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Wagepoint makes it as easy as possible for companies to make payments in cryptocurrency. Customers don’t have to handle bitcoin at all. Instead, Wagepoint takes its fiat currency and handles the convergence for them. In Canada, it uses CA Virtex for the exchange.

Perhaps predictably, tech firms are at the front of the queue when it comes to paying their employees in bitcoin. Structur3D Printing, based in Kitchener, Ontario, produces a system for extruding paste that can be used in 3D printing. Co-founder and president Charles Mire is targeting everything from cake makers and chocolatiers through to hobbyist ‘makers’ with the product, which can handle everything from silicone to cake icing.

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