Crypto payments trend among India’s gig workers

Gig workers are using crypto get a bump in incomes as they avoid paying wire charges for overseas payments

India’s gig workers, including software developers, content creators and those who work with global firms, are reportedly choosing to get paid increasingly in cryptocurrency over traditional money even as the digital currency faces regulatory scrutiny in the country.

India’s crypto community has been leaning into crypto-based incomes for quite some time, the Hindustan Times reported, citing industry executives, with professionals preferring digital currencies such as bitcoin, ether and tether (USDT).

Sending and receiving money in cryptocurrency avoids paying higher wire charges and does not require multinational firms to meet norms that would require them to add an international employee or freelancer to their payrolls.

“There are two schools of thought. One is that you can’t take crypto as payment as the government doesn’t consider it legal tender. The second is that barter is allowed, so why not crypto? I belong to the second one,” Naimish Sanghvi, CEO of cryptocurrency media firm Coin Crunch, told the daily. He added that he had been receiving income in crypto for more than three years, much before he started his company.

A chartered accountant who advises one of India’s larger crypto exchanges told HT that he had had several calls with people who took payments in crypto and were trying to chart out their tax payments, saying he had 50-100 clients who did business this way.

Indian regulators have largely been sceptical of the digital currency, with Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Governor Shaktikanta Das saying last week that the central bank had “major concerns” about cryptocurrencies given their volatility, even as he cleared the air around an old circular that barred banks from dealing in the digital assets.

The RBI has told banks not to refer to the 2018 circular to restrict trading in cryptocurrencies, but stated that banks should still continue to conduct due diligence in such transactions. However, banks have limited their exposure to cryptocurrency as there is little regulatory clarity and considerable nervousness around a comprehensive law in the offing that could lead to a crackdown on crypto.

Until that happens, crypto offers attractive income for gig workers who have to pay significantly less to receive payments from overseas. Most small businesses and freelancers dealing in the digital tokens convert them to fiat using a crypto exchange. Finally, they raise invoices in the name of their clients, showing the amount in rupees and pay taxes on that.