Nabin Banskota from Niural on Global Crypto Payroll through EOR

[00:00:00] Umar: Welcome to The Accountant Quits, brought to you by the Web3 CFO Club, a community by Request Finance. With a curated community of Web3 CFOs from companies like Aave, The Sandbox, Binance, ConsenSys, Ledger, and many more, joining this club will allow you to network and learn best practices on Web3 financial operations.

[00:00:24] Umar: On the Accountant Quits podcast, we discuss how blockchain will impact the accounting profession and how accountants should prepare themselves for the future of work. My name is Omar, your host, and even if some might refer to me as the accountant gone rogue, my job is to provide you with the blockchain knowledge that you need that will be relevant for the accounting industry as a whole.

[00:00:47] Welcome to episode 62. COVID has changed the game for companies hiring internationally. Previously, if an employer didn't have an established business or a legal entity in the jurisdiction where the foreign worker lived, oftentimes their only option would be to hire the worker as an independent contractor.

[00:01:07] Companies couldn't hire full time employees and were thus unable to grant health insurance, pension, and other benefits like stock options. Enter the Employee of Records model, which allows companies without entities abroad to employ workers full time and give them benefits they couldn't grant them as contractors.

[00:01:27] A few of the notable names in Web2 would be Deal, Oyster, or Remote. com. Now, if you're a Web3 team and wish to pay employees in crypto, these companies offer limited features for global crypto payroll. Enter Neural, an EOR platform designed for crypto, which also provides a tech platform for payroll, contractor management, employee benefits, and bill pay.

[00:01:52] Some of their Web3 users include companies such as AllianceDAO, Tensor, Flare, Hadron Labs, Omni, Glodollar, to name a few. Neural has both crypto as well as fiat reels, with an ability to pay in 100 plus local currencies, as well as 7 chains in over 150 countries. Today, I have the pleasure to speak with its founder, Nabeen Baskota, a serial entrepreneur with 20 plus years of experience in fintech, HR, payroll, and sales.

[00:02:25] In this episode today, you will learn the difference between foreign workers as contractors or through an EOR setup, what's driving crypto adoption by Web2 companies. the true experience of a payroll product for crypto, an overview of using neural as an EOR and much more. Nabeen, welcome and thanks for making the time to be here.

[00:02:49] Nabin: Thanks Umar, and great to be here with you today, and it's great that you're doing this, service to the entire web3 ecosystem with your episode and bringing more light about, you know, web3 and, you know, all of the tools that are out there for web3 companies to use.

[00:03:05] Nabin: Absolutely. Pleasure to be here today. 

[00:03:07] Umar: You're welcome Nabin. It's my pleasure to have you. And, I'm excited to learn more about, Niural and the setup you offer for EOR employees. But before we dive into that, could you share with the listeners, your background, how you became interested with blockchain and the story that led you to co founding Niural?

[00:03:27] Nabin: Absolutely. So I spent, you know, for most stage of my career. I was a CFO at a large Wall Street bank. I spent about 14 years in Wall Street and decided to, leave banking to going to, you know, more into the fintech space. So this is my third company. The previous two companies that I've started with the current co founder, we sold the one to Acorns that was more in, B2C consumer fintech in the US with AI, we built the original super agent for AI as well for direct negotiations between consumers and financial institutions in the US.

[00:04:01] Nabin: And then in 2022, we wanted to, you know, we always have this ambition of building a company on a cross border payouts, making the cross border payouts much more easier, better, cheaper, faster for everyone. We've been fascinated with blockchain technology since early days in 2015 and 16, and 2022 was just the right time for us to build, you know, this cross-border payments, utilizing stable coins in crypto as well.

[00:04:30] Nabin: And we wanted to have the biggest use case on this, you know, payment rails, right? And, and Payroll is one of the biggest use case. And if you look at, you know, just in, in general payroll industry, ADP is still the largest payroll provider and today, and they were probably the biggest like a hundred years ago.

[00:04:50] Nabin: And this is one of the least disruptive industry. If you look at it, you know, across all of the industries and, you know, payroll infrastructure in payroll today, is still, you know, from 1980s. And there's a real need, not just in, you know, in crypto side, but also in regular side to be able to come up with the new technology, new infrastructure to run payroll faster, easier, better.

[00:05:14] Nabin: And which is what led us to start this company, to be able to offer, you know, global payroll use case for a lot of the companies and take a lot of the hassle of, you know, money movements so that's why, you know, we decided to jump on it and build a money movement rails. both in fiat and crypto and run payroll on top of it.

[00:05:34] Nabin: And then we have several other use cases that we can talk about. 

[00:05:38] Umar: All right. I want to start our conversation with the rise of remote work. So like I said, in the intro COVID has opened the eyes of many businesses who previously would never have thought of having a remote employee. We've all survived COVID and we know that most work can be performed remotely.

[00:05:55] Umar: So previously, companies had psychological barriers to hiring internationally. Let's say if a US company had to hire someone from South Africa, that person would have to be a contractor because the US company would be reluctant to investigate into local employment laws, right? But with the emergence of employee of records model and companies like Deel, Oyster or Remote.com that US employer now can hire talent from South Africa or anywhere else as a full time employee with that person receiving stock options, if applicable, and the whole shebang of benefits. So remote work is here to stay and you can now truly hire without borders. 

[00:06:37] Umar: So this conversation today will be around when to choose an employee of record versus setting up a local entity, which are two of the available working relationship models for hiring talent abroad. But first, I want to ask you, Nabin, can you share some trends you're seeing with hiring, for web3 teams in general? 

[00:06:59] Nabin: Yeah, so let me start by saying, you know, you are absolutely right.

[00:07:02] Nabin: The remote work is here to stay. It might maybe hybrid in some instances of some countries, but, you know, especially in web3 space, I think distributed workforce and remote workforce is absolutely the way that we are seeing companies heading, globally. 

[00:07:18] Nabin: We see companies hiring from, you know, let's take some of these US companies, they're hiring people in everywhere from, you know, in South America, East Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, everywhere, right? You know, we, we have capabilities to serve our clients and hiring contractors and employees in over 150 countries. And we're starting to see the trend, you know, there was a little bit of a bear market in 2022, and coming into 2023, but hiring has picked up and we're starting to see, you know, talent war again.

[00:07:51] Nabin: This occurred back in, you know, 2020 and 2021 in the US during the COVID and many companies went internationally. And now we're starting to see the same pace. I think unemployment rate in the US is still 3. 5%. So that tells you, you know, what the talent war is going to start. And with this, you know, new AI wave and, and crypto now is coming back.

[00:08:14] Nabin: we're starting to see fight for talent from all places. And companies have to adapt and have to go internationally to be able to find the talent. And that's what we're seeing, right? And with the emergence of Employee of Record, it is not a new concept. and I think that a couple of players, they put a little bit of, better front end, being able to manage it better, you know, and being able to hire enough faster, gave rise to the EOR concept in 2019, you know, once the COVID started, and obviously the usual players like Deel and Remote have done, you know, capitalized on it as well, but it's a win win situation for everyone, right?

[00:08:52] Nabin: So. Rather than just hiring contractors, you know, all over the globe. If you want to provide employee benefits, you want to be able to offer stock options, also want them to be part of your company. And today, like three, four or five years ago, if you were to hire an employee, you would have to go set up an entity.

[00:09:11] Nabin: You have to hire a payroll processor, a compliance person, accounting person, tax person. You have to manage all of this in a country that you have never done business before. So obviously we are making that a lot easier. So you come to Niural and let's say if you want to hire an employee, you don't need to set up your entity.

[00:09:28] Nabin: You can just use Niural entity or one of one of our partners entity. You don't have to worry about employment loss and things like that. We make that very, you know, we give you the contractual template. We tell you what needs to be done. We will advise you and even, you know, give you all of the employment agreements as well.

[00:09:46] Nabin: Right. So from onboarding to providing benefits to running payroll to filing taxes and compliance in that country, we take care of everything. So that allows companies to focus on what they're doing on their business side and rely on neural to be able to hire employees being compliant and being able to pay them, pay them on time. Which is really the key. 

[00:10:09] Nabin: And that also helps them, you know, hire an employee and be up and running in 24 to 48 hours, as opposed to 6 to 8 months prior to, you know, this EOR concept was, So, so it's an advantage to both companies and companies like ourselves, you know.

[00:10:25] Nabin: We try to help them as much as possible to be able to do this seamlessly in a global settings where they don't need to know a lot of, a lot of about, you know, certain countries and doing business in other countries. 

[00:10:37] Umar: Perfect. I want the listeners to really understand the difference between hiring contractors or employees through the employee of records model.

[00:10:46] Umar: So you're right that the employee of records model have existed for many years, but now, companies like Deel or yourself at Niural, you've come up with these tech platform to make the lives of employers easier. 

[00:11:00] Umar: So let's just start with the contractors model. So if you want to work with international workers directly without partnering up with any entity, you can hire independent contractor and I've been an independent contractor myself. So when you would hire international contractors, usually you're only responsible for the fees, not for the accompanying benefits and local taxes. The contractor is responsible for filing the tax forms and paying whatever is needed in their, country.

[00:11:30] Umar: Now, speaking for both the employer and the contractor, could you share the pros and cons of such a contractor setup? 

[00:11:37] Nabin: Yeah, absolutely. So, you can hire contractors from, you know, from Niural. It's really easy. We also give you all kinds of templates, all kinds of modules as well. And like you said, in the contractor is in the US, it's 1099 in internationally. You're just basically paying them once a month. As an employer you're not withholding any taxes on them. The contractors are responsible for paying taxes on their own. They typically don't get any benefits. In some instances, they are able to get, you know, uh, stock options or tokens, for example, in web3, which is reliable based on how you set up your tokenomics within your company for Web3 companies and stock options for other companies.

[00:12:20] Nabin: But that's where it ends, right? It's a little bit of a simple model, which is what companies prefer, because you pay them, you don't have to worry about, running payroll, filing taxes, matching social security or retirement contributions in certain countries.

[00:12:35] Nabin: So when you hire an employee and, and the difference is really right as a company, you know, they need to make a decision as to whether they want to hire this person as an independent contractor or an employee. Typically we know when, when we see the transition is let's say a company starting to get bigger, the person has been there for, you know, with the company for about, a year or so, you really liked the person and you really want to provide a better options, in terms of benefits and things like that.

[00:13:02] Nabin: So they tend to go and hide that person as an employee, but having. Having to hire an employee comes with all kinds of different complexities, right? So, for example, you need to have an entity to hire that employee because you have to be able to register your entity in a country where, because you have to pay taxes, you have to pay social security contributions and things like that.

[00:13:24] Nabin: So that's what, you know, the EOR comes into play, right? So what, as an EOR player ourselves, rather than the client, the company, setting up their own entities, they can just utilize Niural entity to hire that employee and we'll take care of all of the taxes, benefits, and all those other things that are required.

[00:13:41] Nabin: So that is the main difference, right? So hiring a contractor versus employee, when you're hiring an employee, you do have to run payroll in that country. You do have to comply with all of the rules and regulations, including, some of the labor laws, which are very complex in certain jurisdictions.

[00:13:57] Nabin: Even, you know, when you wanna let that person go and you wanna fire that person, in some countries there is no concept of, you know, firing people right. You know, it's called separations. And there are all kinds of other things that, you know, from the labor law perspective that we help guide, you know, the companies as well.

[00:14:13] Nabin: So those are the things that you have to, you know, think about paying them, calculating payroll taxes, filing those taxes with the authorities, contributing to the country, you know, social security or retirement and other, you know, other, other retirement benefits in certain countries, and then complying with all kinds of labor laws, including giving them vacations, sick time off and other benefits that are, mandated by that certain countries, right?

[00:14:38] Nabin: So that is the main difference. It is a bit of a compliance heavy process to hire an employee. But, you know, companies like ourselves make that really easy for, for companies to do that. 

[00:14:52] Umar: Perfect. So this was one of my follow up questions on employee of record. So I'll just summarize what you just explained, Nabin, for the listeners.

[00:15:00] Umar: So an employee of record, it's a third party organization like Niural that would legally employ staff internationally on behalf of the client, essentially where you don't have an entity. So through this arrangement, the EOR ensures that your company is compliant with all local employment laws. And, uh, you already, went through the benefits, uh, that you don't have to, you don't have to set up an entity and that employee can, is now eligible for benefits such as medical retirement plans.

[00:15:32] Umar: And, they don't have to deal with the hassle of, local tax filings. I want to ask you about the difference then between what the difference between an employee of record and a professional employer organization or PEO? 

[00:15:48] Nabin: So a lot of the times, you know, folks refer to EOR as a PEO as well, there are, there is a legal difference, which is PEO refers to a joint employment between a provider and a company where the provider takes on administrative, functions, for that particular employee, which is running payroll, providing benefits and things like that. And that's particularly interesting and, you know, very well used in the US for, you know, for a lot of years now, it's a very mature ecosystem in the US for the PEO, simply because smaller business.

[00:16:25] Nabin: You know, once again, US healthcare system is very complex and for, and it's a private system as well right? So the PEO basically, assembles all of the employees under all of their clients into one entity, into their own entity. And they basically go to health insurance companies, insurance companies, and get insurance.

[00:16:47] Nabin: As if they are a thousands person company or a big company, right? And because of that, they're getting in a much better benefits as a lower cost. And that's what PEO does to a smaller companies is pass on those benefits to those smaller companies as a result. Smaller companies become a client of a PEO and they're able to access, you know, better health insurance companies at a very affordable cost.

[00:17:12] Nabin: And that's literally the reason why I think a PEO existed. And also in the US if you are with the PEO, and you don't have to register yourself in all of the states and do all of the tax filings and, and registrations that PEO can take care of those for the end clients that are certain exceptions in certain states.

[00:17:34] Nabin: And the PEO also existed in some other countries, but I have, I'm yet to see a very mature ecosystem internationally. So internationally EOR is popular, whereas EOR, we take on as an EOR provider, a full liability for that particular employee, as opposed to a joint liability with, you know, shared liability. So those are the two main differences there.

[00:17:55] Umar: Now for cryptocurrencies to truly go mainstream Nabin, we also need web2 companies adopting crypto for their cross border payments. For reasons we've laid out multiple times on this podcast, crypto would be attractive as payments are near instant and they have low transaction fees compared to what they're currently with Swift.

[00:18:18] Umar: So many countries, including the US and Canada, correct me if I'm wrong, but they require wage payments to be made in fiat currency to comply with labor standards. Some other countries, they would have implicit bans on crypto. At Niural, you started with crypto for payroll, but now you also offer fiat.

[00:18:38] Umar: Based on your experience, what are some of the learnings driving adoption of cryptocurrencies from web2 companies? 

[00:18:46] Nabin: Yeah, absolutely. I think you know what we have built at Niural is we have a parallel rails. We have a parallel fiat rails as well as crypto rails. And what that means is a company can come to Niural and pay their workforce, you know, either crypto or fiat, and we wanted to make sure the infrastructure is something that we build for next 30 or 50 years, as opposed to the next year of the year after, because, you know, we wanted to build a long lasting business here.

[00:19:15] Nabin: And we do believe the adoption of crypto, especially the stable coins as a method of payments for salary payment will continue to rise, right? And we have already seen that in our platform. 

[00:19:27] Nabin: Right now, you know, the adoption is purely across web3 companies, when they are hiding, you know, developers in countries like Brazil and Argentina in Africa and Southeast Asia.

[00:19:40] Nabin: Where the worker wants to get access to US dollars, right? And, you know, as a, worker in those country, they can't open up a US dollar bank account. They have to receive, everything in the local currencies. And their currencies in certain countries has not been doing well.

[00:19:57] Nabin: So as a result, there's a lot of demand that's driven from those, uh, workers from those countries to be, to get paid in stable coins, such as USDC and USDT. And, you know, for the contractors, it's easy to do because as a contractor, the companies can easily pay them in, in US stable coins. And we see a massive, traction on that side in our platform.

[00:20:20] Nabin: We do have a contractor platform where you can literally bring in your wallet, link your wallet and pay your workers, directly in stable coins through our smart contracts. The secondarily, we're also starting to see, because we serve web2 customers as well, right? And in the web2 customer side, we're starting to see companies, you know, global, even they are 10 persons company, right?

[00:20:44] Nabin: So whether they're in US or Canada, they're hiring, workers, anywhere in the world. And that brings a certain type of, demands from those workers as well. And more and more, we're starting to see web2 companies asking us to help them pay those contractors in stable coins as well, such as USDC and USDT.

[00:21:04] Nabin: So we're starting to see that demand from our web2 customers, but it's not there where we can say, okay, you know, it's taking off, right? So I think we would absolutely need that demand from web2 customers to make these mainstream adoption of payments in stable coins for salary payments. I think what's, helping us is the institutional adoption of Bitcoin in the US through Bitcoin ETF. You know, starting to give more and more, prominent role for stable coins as a settlement layer. I know Visa is already working with, Solana to settle cross border transactions in stable coins. And there are other use cases that are emerging right now. For example, PayPal getting into, stable coins.

[00:21:48] Nabin: And once they start to do that, people listen, and the adoption happens faster. Whereas, there are still rules and regulations that we need to follow for salary payments for employees, which are very slow to change. And, you know, the adoption of payments in stablecoins, may or may not impact, the payments of salaries for actual employees in certain countries.

[00:22:12] Nabin: So we still see a majority of the majority of the time we have to pay salaries in local currencies. But we hope, you know, that will change over the years. There are certain countries more flexible than other countries. In some countries like Sweden, you can't even pay anybody in stable coins or crypto, right?

[00:22:29] Nabin: You have to pay them in local currency. So there are countries like that as well. But I'm hoping and we're hoping as you know, the adoption of crypto happens at the institutional level as we get more and more companies offering this, in more and more countries. That are more off ramp type of capabilities.

[00:22:46] Nabin: And as the government's kind of catching up to the regulations as well, I think we will see more adoption, or more, you know, demand from, folks wanting to get paid in crypto. And then the government rules are supporting that as well. 

[00:23:00] Umar: Yeah, I agree. With PayPal coming up with this stable coin, I think this will be a huge boon for the industry.

[00:23:06] Umar: Right. And, I think one of the biggest blockers for companies is, switching from the mindset of having your funds in custody to now a self custody model and having to manage your own private keys. So, companies are reluctant because probably education as well is a big barrier to, to start, operating with, digital currencies.

[00:23:28] Umar: Now let's speak a little bit more about Niural. So for the listeners, like I mentioned earlier, Niural is similar to Deel, but for crypto, could you explain the services provided by Niural and the jurisdictions currently being offered? 

[00:23:44] Nabin: Yeah. So Niural is Deel plus crypto, right? So we can serve the similar customers that Deel is serving on the web2 side, but we can also serve web3 customers with some use cases that are very specific to crypto, right? And one of the ways we support crypto companies is you know on the contractor side. You know, the setup at Deel is very complex. You have to go to open up a Coinbase account. Contractor has to have a Coinbase account, so they can only pay through custodial wallets.

[00:24:12] Nabin: Where at Niural, we wrote our own smart contracts and that's been audited as well. So we make it extremely easy if a company wants to come to our platform and pay these contractors or workers in crypto in USDC, mainly in stable coins. They can just bring their own wallet, non custodial wallet. So we support non custodial wallets over seven different chains and 40 plus wallets that are supported.

[00:24:36] Nabin: And they can, you know, we do have the onboarding process. We do KYC, KYB as well to make sure that, yeah. the employers, and the employees are who they say they are. And it also gives an ability for us to make sure that the platform is very compliant. That there's no other fraud or anything else that's happening in, in the platform as well.

[00:24:58] Nabin: And, you know, we support non custodial wallets through our own smart contracts and that allows a very like a distributed way to pay workers, right? So you don't even have to send those funds to Niural so we're not taking custody of those funds. The smart contracts is moving these funds or tokens directly from your wallet to the contractor wallet.

[00:25:19] Nabin: So we're just providing a technology to be able to do that. And which is, I think, the ethos of a, you know, of a web3 company, right? It has to be more distributed. And the way the Deel now that offer operates is not, you know, the distributed way. It's more centralized. And that's the main difference there.

[00:25:36] Nabin: And we also have platform that has more products than Deel. So, for example, in the US, we have our own payroll system from scratch. And I know a lot of the companies in the crypto space and web3 space, they call themselves a payroll, but they're only paying from one wallet to another wallet. What we do is much more different than that.

[00:25:57] Nabin: We actually calculate the actual taxes, remit those taxes to the governments. You know, we take care of full tax and compliance, including filing in every countries that we operate as a payroll. So that is the main difference between us and and others. We also have, and as we talked about the contract platform, employer of record, which is what we compete with Deel the most, but we also compete within the companies like ADP and Gusto in the US on the regular payroll side, because all of the web3 companies have US employees.

[00:26:26] Nabin: They need benefits. They need to be able to process payments. So we do that for them in the one platform as well. And additionally, we also offer a bill pay product where, you know, companies can pay third party invoices, you know, in both fiat and crypto as well. 

[00:26:42] Umar: I mean, based on the conversations and the products I've seen so far, and I've been, I don't know any other companies doing it the way Niural is doing it. And I think it's fantastic. 

[00:26:52] Umar: I want to go through, maybe a little bit more in detail about this, the monthly payroll process, how it looks like. So could you explain, so if someone has to do their monthly payroll through Niural, how would that look like under an EOR setup, let's say?

[00:27:08] Nabin: Yeah. So they could come and they can pay us in, you know, stable coins, you know, we can do all of the contracts as if it's a regular web2 type of company. So we have that, you know, utility there, right. And with the full compliance and everything as a payment layer, they'll be able to pay us in stable coins, using their own wallet or centralized wallet.

[00:27:29] Umar: Sorry, can I interrupt you? What do you mean when you say they can pay you? Because you said you don't hold custody of funds. It's only at the time of payment that they would pay through their Gnosis Safe. 

[00:27:40] Nabin: Yeah. So that's what I meant. Like, you know, they can run everything in our systems.

[00:27:44] Nabin: And at the end, when they are ready to pay, you know, to fund that payroll, they'll be able to use their wallets, whether it's a centralized wallet or a decentralized, non custodial wallets. And. Niural app is integrated in Gnosis Safe so they can actually go to Safe and run Niural through the custom app and the multi sig will automatically get triggered.

[00:28:06] Nabin: So if they are using non custodial wallets, then they can utilize those, multi sig authorization as a part of the corporate treasury program and control process to be able to authorize transactions in the Niural system as well. But think about running your regular payroll as in you're in ADP and Gusto and having an ability to pay using your own wallet, using multi sig.

[00:28:29] Nabin: And pay in a lot of different stable coin currencies. Okay. And then there is a tax component of it. So for the tax component, what we do is we automatically convert, in the system from, from USDC or from your stables to, to the fiat currencies. And then because the governments, you know, they don't take stable coins, for tax payments.

[00:28:51] Nabin: So we have to remit those in fiat currency. So, we remit the portion that's required for tax and other benefits that needs to be paid to the government. And then we will pay those, authorities in fiat currencies for that person as well. 

[00:29:07] Umar: Okay. So let's say in my Niural dashboard right now, I would see, I would be paying my employee in USDC.

[00:29:13] Umar: I would see the equivalent of that tax amount, being calculated in USD in my dashboard and you will be taking care of those taxes, which is amazing. Yes, absolutely. So now Niural, you, what I understood is Neural works for US businesses and this EOR service serves 150 countries. I want to clarify what that really means.

[00:29:37] Umar: So that means a US company hiring talent from these 150 countries, right? So if, let's say a company is based in France, they would not be eligible to be onboarded with Niural right?

[00:29:49] Nabin: No, absolutely. No, actually, we can onboard any clients as long as they pass the KYB, we'll be able to onboard clients all over the globe, mostly on the contractor platform.

[00:29:58] Nabin: We have global clients, and if they strictly want to just pay in crypto in the USDC, they can choose to do so from the platform. It's fully automated. Even for employer, we also have, you know, foreign companies hiring their workers in the US throughout the EOR program as well. So effectively, these are foreign companies that we're onboarding to Niural platform as well.

[00:30:20] Nabin: And yeah, so we can actually serve not just US companies, but foreign companies as well. And we do serve foreign, foreign companies as well. It's just that some, there are some limitations in the payment method, on the fiat side, if you had a foreign company, but other than that, the platform works for a US company, a Canadian company, a UK company, a French company, a company in Asia. It works for all of the globe. 

[00:30:42] Umar: But Nabin, what I want to understand and what I want the listeners to understand is, let's say that French company, would you also take care of the local tax filing in France? 

[00:30:52] Nabin: Yes, absolutely. So the way it works, you know, let's take an example of a US company hiring employees in France, in Germany and in Singapore and Brazil and India. Yeah, so. Through our EOR program, you know, they can hire them. We support 150 countries. And you know, we'll be able to help them hire employees in 150 countries. And we will take care of all of the, tax calculations, tax filings, payments to, authorities for retirements and pensions.

[00:31:22] Nabin: So we'll take care of everything else that are payroll related, whether it's a payment or taxes for those employees as well in all 150 countries, we have our own entities in more than 10 countries at this point. We work with other ICP partners in a lot of these other countries. But we expect to be, you know, in about 30 to 35 countries by end of the year.

[00:31:43] Nabin: We'll continue, we're continuing to adding our own entities in several countries and have our own operations as well. But we do use partners in most of the countries to run payroll, file compliance taxes that our clients will, they don't have to actually worry about it. They'll never actually have to talk to them about it.

[00:32:01] Nabin: So the interactions with our clients is through our Niural dashboard and to Niural team as well. 

[00:32:07] Umar: Before we continue, we'll take a quick commercial break from our sponsor.

[00:32:12] Umar: Working in web3 can transform your career, be financially rewarding, and surround you with a vibrant community. But as you're very much aware, this space requires rethinking a lot of the old models of how we work. For example, as the leader in a web3 organization, it's up to you to figure out the most cost effective way to offramp the company's crypto, or what's the most efficient setup to mass pay your contractors in crypto.

[00:32:37] Umar: Getting your organization to run on crypto is daunting if you're alone. That's why Request Finance, the industry leader in crypto invoicing, payroll, and expenses has curated a community of web3 CFOs to share best practices around web3 financial operations. 

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[00:33:50] Umar: Now, some companies in web3, they claim to offer payroll, but I'd like the listeners to know the true experience of a payroll product. So a required feature for payroll, like we've been speaking of today is ensuring social deductions are calculated and deducted correctly.

[00:34:06] Umar: So in the case of web3 teams paying in crypto, that would mean, converting to fiat. Like we just said, like Niural, they would take out all the social deductions and then convert that back to crypto for net pay and offering the employee or the contractor with their pay stub, that would be the experience that, users could expect with Niural?

[00:34:28] Nabin: Absolutely. So the moment they pay moment, they run the payroll in Niural system, a pay stub is automatically generated with their full deductions of, you know, how much is for taxes, how much is for social contributions, how much is for pensions and benefits and things like that. And we will, once again, we'll take care of all of those payments, to authorities as well and making them fully compliant.

[00:34:47] Nabin: And we will pay the employees, the contractors in their wallet to bank account. So we have abilities to pay in a hundred plus local currencies as well. So in, you know, through the contractors are easy, right? Because contractors can pay in the wallet directly in cryptos. In most of the countries, we still need to pay them in local currencies.

[00:35:05] Nabin: So we do offer an on and off ramp, to be able to, to help these companies, where they can pay us in stable coins. And we'll be able to pay them in, fiat in local currencies in a hundred plus currencies as a, you know, as part of our EOR program, because we are required to pay them in local currencies.

[00:35:22] Nabin: But that is absolutely the experience that they should expect. And you know, we work with our smart contracts with an ability to pay from, you know, noncustodial wallets or custodial wallets, be able to use multi sig through their Safe program. I know these are all of the things that I don't think any other provider in this space has this, you know, such as Deel, Remote or other competitors actually don't offer any of this.

[00:35:47] Nabin: So we are very knowledgeable about in how that works. You know, we have built this system. It took us a while to build the system. So we spend more than a year to building the system from scratch so that we can deliver this sort of, you know, better experience for clients in web3 space as well.

[00:36:06] Nabin: And because we also serve clients in web2 space, we know what the compliance, we know what the payroll run looks like. We know what are the processes that we need to follow. And we bring the more compliant platform for web3 space to be able to help them with not just on the payment side, but also on, you know, contracts and invoicing, making their, audit ready platform for them at the end of the month, at the end of the year to go through the audit as well.

[00:36:31] Nabin: And also giving them a mature product that they can rely on, as they the ecosystem matures, we're going to need more and more of these type of tools to be able to help them support them. 

[00:36:42] Nabin: We want to support this ecosystem and we want to see companies mature, but as a part of that maturity process, company will need to understand. that they need to start utilizing some of these tools to make them compliant as well. 

[00:36:54] Umar: And I can also confirm that speaking with other CFOs in web3 that they did mention some of the drawbacks using Deel is that you can only fund from a bank account or a Coinbase account.

[00:37:07] Umar: And sometimes they don't have an account on Coinbase, they have an account on another exchange, so they'd have to open a Coinbase account that takes sometimes weeks or months. So it is a pain point. Now, there's something else I want to understand is from the employee, perspective, when they would receive the funds from the employer, how would withdrawal work?

[00:37:30] Umar: Would they receive those funds directly in their wallet? What are the fees involved? How does that work?

[00:37:35] Nabin: So that's it. That is another place where we have simplified the process. And I understand when a Deel uses a wallet and every time you withdraw from the wallet, they charge you certain amounts. We have basically made that process entirely simplistic and less costly.

[00:37:53] Nabin: And what I meant by that is The employee and the contractors can come into our platform as a part of the onboarding. They'll be able to connect their wallet or connect their bank account. So we will pay if they are part of our EOR program and we need to pay them local currency, it goes directly into the bank account, right?

[00:38:10] Nabin: And there's no withdrawal fees in the entire money goes into the bank account without any cost to them. And similarly, if they're contractors, you know, they can come, you know, link their wallet and the entirety of the amount goes directly into their own wallet. So without incurring additional cost as well.

[00:38:26] Nabin: So we thought about how the competitors are, you know, doing that in the space. And we wanted to make this very simplistic, which is why we wrote our own smart contracts and went through that process to make the process more simple. And I think. we also thought about how do we make this process so simple because, you know, a lot of the web3 customers understands the wallet and the non custodial and the custodial, but like I said in the beginning, right, for this ecosystem to mature, and get bigger and bigger.

[00:38:56] Nabin: We do need web2 customers. And how do we attract web2 customers and make the process so easy for them that they can literally come into our platform, you know, do a couple of clicks and they'll be able to, get paid in whatever currencies and whatever tokens they want, right?

[00:39:12] Nabin: So we need to make the UI so simplistic and so easy for them. So we also thought from that perspective as to how to make this entire process easier, which is where you will see you know, as somebody using our platform, you know, we make the entire process so seamless and smooth because that is what's required for us to get web2 customer start adopting web3 tools.

[00:39:36] Umar: Yeah, I completely agree with you. Now there's some other players of the industry who've introduced crypto to fiat, meaning, the employer could use their crypto treasury to make the payment while the employee would receive fiat directly in their bank account. So one of my next question was to speak, about your roadmap.

[00:39:56] Umar: So could you mention some of the upcoming features and milestones for Niural and whether crypto to fiat is there or it already exists? 

[00:40:05] Nabin: Yeah, crypto fiat already exist. In terms of the roadmap on the crypto ecosystem side, the off ramp part is still challenging, right? And it's because, you know, it, you know, there are certain solutions that exist, but still very expensive, and only available to certain countries and certain geos.

[00:40:23] Nabin: And our goal is to holistically think about a solution that might work for the entirety of the population. And, you know, we are part of a Visa FinTech FastTrack program and Crypto FastTrack program as well, so we have a really good relationship with Visa. And we have done a lot of work with them in a lot of different ways.

[00:40:41] Nabin: One of the items that we have in the roadmap is to be able to offer a global visa card or, you know, some sort of a debit card that's backed by the wallet so that it becomes a natural off ramp mechanism so that in the user don't even have to think about it. They have a Visa debit card that they can utilize, uh, anywhere in the world that they can go.

[00:41:02] Nabin: So they don't have to send, you know, money from the non custodial wallets to, you know, some sort of exchange, pay another 2 percent to, to, you know, move that to their bank account. I think, with an ability to offer a Visa debit card backed by the wallet, what will manage everything for them. I think that would be the much more seamless process to do off ramp and very, cost effective as well.

[00:41:23] Nabin: So that's something that we're thinking about that's in the roadmap for us, to offer within the web3 ecosystem. 

[00:41:29] Nabin: And then plus the, you know, automated treasury management as well. We have tinkered with the idea of doing it on our own, but we see a lot of different tools in the system in the ecosystem.

[00:41:39] Nabin: Right now, there are some great treasury management solutions out there. So we will offer digital treasury management solutions to web3 companies where the moment you get paid in your in your wallet, you'll start to generate yield as well. And that's something that we're also, working on. 

[00:41:58] Umar: Now globally speaking, Nabin, the bear market has been good for the industry. It allowed builders to do what they do best, basically to build, tools for, crypto to get adopted. What are you looking forward to in 2024, which you think could accelerate the adoption of crypto? For example, PayPal launching their stable coin, I think is it's very good for the industry.

[00:42:22] Nabin: In terms of, you know, 2024, I think for crypto adoption to happen, we need certain things to happen. Like I said, institutional adoption of, you know, Bitcoin ETF in the US is a great moment for us, for this industry.

[00:42:36] Nabin: Circle has filed for an IPO. It'll be great to see Circle being recognized in the US public market. That also brings new type of, certainty into the market. And, you know, it also invites a lot of new customers and a lot of new web2 customers into the space as well. And that'll help drive the adoptions as well.

[00:42:52] Nabin: The other thing that we absolutely need is we do need some, you know, common sense rules and regulations, whether that in the U. S. and certain other countries as well, the regulations around crypto in terms of the payments, paying people's salary, employee's salary in crypto.

[00:43:05] Nabin: All of those things are still very vague. I think, you know, what will help the ecosystem is we need some sort of rules, they may not be what we want in the beginning, but in having clarity in the rules should absolutely help the ecosystem as well. Then people can, you know, work around or people can work with the system on what do the rules and regulations to be able to comply with them.

[00:43:25] Nabin: And in general, the adoption of, blockchain, by JP Morgan and Citi, I know a lot of these banks. They say one thing in the, in the public space, but they're doing certain things, you know, behind the back, right. And we're also seeing a massive adoption of tokenization of real world assets.

[00:43:43] Nabin: I think, you know, BlackRock is now coming out and saying, like, hey, this is the new, new industry that are already a lot of, assets that are being, tokenized, whether that are corporate treasuries or invested assets, actual private funds are being tokenized as well. And all of those have, you know, great utility into the system, right?

[00:44:03] Nabin: And these are actual real use cases that will, you know, definitely, definitely increase the productivity of the operations of those, of those companies. So, there are multiple different use cases that I'm seeing, stable coin as a method of payment globally, real world assets tokenization, NFT as a method, NFT in a different capacity as well.

[00:44:25] Nabin: And I think this bear market has flushed out some of the weak hands. And now I think, you know, what I'm seeing in every conference that I go to, there are real players, real companies that are solving real world issues. And I think that's what we needed in order to, help the ecosystem grow and being taken very, very seriously.

[00:44:43] Nabin: So I'm very excited about 2024 and I am looking forward to some of these milestones, like Circle being a public company in the US right? And I want to see more and more companies like BlackRock, like KKR, Apollo and other come out and say like, hey, we're actually gonna, you know, tokenize our funds and make it, available for retail people as well.

[00:45:01] Nabin: Like, I think those kind of, wave will absolutely bring more maturity, more people into the system and it'll actually drive the adoption of in the crypto as a payment or the different use cases in the system. 

[00:45:14] Umar: I agree. It's a good time to be in web3. A lot of people are excited about 2024.

[00:45:18] Umar: It's also a good time to enter web3. So, people looking to educate themselves to work in an industry, which is going to be we believe, the future of how everything will be done. Now, the time is passing and, we're already at the end of the episode. So as closing thoughts, has there been anything else that we didn't touch on that you would like to share with the listeners?

[00:45:42] Nabin: No, we touched on a lot of different things. One thing that I would like to mention is, you know, we built this platform for crypto companies and web3 companies as well, and we serve both web2 and web3, and, you know, if you give us a chance and come look at the system, I think, you know, we have thought of a lot of different uses.

[00:45:58] Nabin: Obviously, we're not perfect, but we believe we have the tools to help these companies become more compliant. Make their operations smooth, give them an ability to, you know, pay in both cryptos, stable coins as well as in fiat, and also give them a real tool that, you know, have not existed in the web3 space before to be able to, make sure that their operations and they're, they're very compliant and they can actually, you know, scale their business, right?

[00:46:26] Nabin: Because you need to have a better operations. HR Payroll is one of those things that people may not talk about, openly in the public, but this is the central point for the companies, because you have to take care of your people for them to actually to, help you scale the business.

[00:46:43] Nabin: As I said, there are different use cases, and we will continue to put more resources on R&D and making the UI much, much better. Because the ultimate goal here is not to only serve the web3 ecosystem, but bring more web 2 customers into the web3 ecosystem. And that will truly help, you know, uh, make this, uh, ecosystem, you know, kind of continue to move forward.

[00:47:08] Umar: Perfect. And I can share with the listeners that Nabin showed me an overview of the platform the other day, and I was, I was really impressed by it. So I think the future is bright for Niural and, I think you built a really good product that we really need. There's a last question, which I like to ask to my guests before they leave.

[00:47:28] Umar: Do you have a favorite quote or a maxim that you live by? 

[00:47:32] Nabin: Yeah, and this might be very timely for the entire audience as well. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. It's a famous quote by Walt Disney, and you know, if you are an entrepreneur, you know, if you want to get into the web3 ecosystem, I think that's very relevant.

[00:47:49] Nabin: You need to start doing things rather than just talking about it. Yeah. It's one that I live by as well, I guess. Absolutely. Well, you're doing a phenomenal job for the entire ecosystem as well. So it's great to, you know, great to have. Thanks for having me today and being able to tell a little bit more about Niural.

[00:48:09] Nabin: If any of your listeners wants to know more about Niural and how we are supporting the ecosystem, I'm more than happy to be available for a coffee, you know, call, whatever, just ping me LinkedIn or Twitter or telegram. 

[00:48:23] Umar: Perfect. Well, thanks a lot for coming today. Nabin, I learned personally, I learned a lot on, payroll today on, the EOR model, which I didn't know, a lot personally speaking. So thanks a lot for this conversation and we'll be in touch and we'll speak soon. 

[00:48:37] Nabin: Thanks Umar. Thanks so much. 

[00:48:39] Umar: I would like to thank everyone for listening to this episode. You will find all the links of the episode, show notes, and transcript on the website of The Accountant Quits at theaccountantquits. com. 

[00:48:50] Umar: Please note that this content is for general information purposes only and is not a substitute for consultation with professional advisors. If you do know anyone who could benefit from the episode and you care about them, please do share the episode with them. All the episodes are available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

[00:49:10] Umar: And by leaving us a review and rating, you will support the channel and all your fellow accountants. In order to be notified each time we release a new episode, do follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn. We hope to have you with us next time. Bye for now.