GMO Internet, a Japanese web hosting company, announces that its employees can choose to be paid in Bitcoins. Workers can opt to receive between 1,000 yen ($88) and 100,000 yen ($890) of their paychecks in the popular cryptocurrency.
While getting paid in Bitcoin is nothing new, but GMO is a large company with thousands of employees. This makes GMO the first publicly traded company to implement the idea.
To make more employees opt into the program, the company offers a 10 percent bonus if they choose to receive a portion of their salaries in Bitcoin. Employees that do, could convert their Bitcoin salary into traditional currency at any point if they want to.
GMO Internet believes this employee compensation program could help the company becomes more familiar with Bitcoin as it dives further into the cryptocurrency space. "We hope to improve our own literacy of virtual currency by actually using it," said Harumi Ishii, the company's spokeswoman.
Usually, companies want their employees to have a stable and positive cashflow situation. But with GMO allowing its employees to earn Bitcoin, it can make things rather problematic, especially since the cryptocurrrency is highly volatile.
To make the attempt legal, GMO employees were provided a choice. The company's program gives workers the option of having a portion of their pay deducted and used to purchase Bitcoin at current rates, or be paid in Japanese yen like usual.
So the shift is entirely optional. GMO is offering a range of entry points into the initiative.
"Employees can receive salaries by Bitcoin if they want to," said Harumi Ishii.
While employees can certainly exchange a portion of their salary for Bitcoin on their own; GMO's offering is just a way to automate the process of investing in Bitcoin for its workers.
