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Programmable Payments for Global Work

Why paying multiple people across borders is still operationally broken

Lisa Bechina, founder

Preface

We started in the creator economy.

Over the past year, we onboarded 4,000 creators, ran over 300 marketing campaigns for crypto projects, and processed over $100,000 in payments across multiple blockchains.

We expected distribution to be hard — getting creators to show up, managing content quality, coordinating deliverables across time zones.

But what actually broke our operations was executing payments at scale.

Moving money on-chain is trivial. The hard part was the operational overhead: bridging between chains, swapping tokens, managing wallet addresses for 100+ people, preventing catastrophic errors, and keeping compensation data private.

Each payment required 5-10 manual steps. We were spending more time on payment logistics than running campaigns.

This memo explains why crypto payments for work are still operationally broken — and why the companies building programmable payment infrastructure will capture the next wave of digital labor markets.

Introduction: Digital labor is becoming a structural workforce category

The nature of work is fundamentally changing.

Freelancers and creators have become a structural component of the global economy, operating as:

  • Remote-first: Work happens across borders by default
  • Project-based: Engagements are task-oriented, not employment contracts
  • Platform-agnostic: Contributors work across multiple platforms simultaneously
  • Crypto-native: Especially in web3, contributors expect on-chain settlement

According to Goldman Sachs, the creator economy is expected to reach $480 billion by 2027, nearly doubling from $250 billion today.

At the same time, freelance work is professionalizing rapidly. Upwork reports:

  • Freelancers generated $1.5 trillion in earnings in the U.S. alone in 2024
  • ~20 million skilled freelancers now participate in knowledge work
  • Median full-time freelance income reached $85,000 annually

These workers deliver specialized, high-value labor globally — the systems used to pay them are fundamentally mismatched to how the work actually happens.

The problems

Cross-border payments remain slow and expensive

Despite decades of fintech innovation, international payments are still inconsistent.

Research from the European Central Bank shows:

  • One-third of retail cross-border payments take more than one business day
  • Nearly one-quarter of corridors exceed 3% in cost

The Bank for International Settlements warns that improvements have been incremental, and G20 targets for faster, cheaper cross-border payments may not be met on schedule.

SWIFT reports that while 90% of payments reach the beneficiary bank within an hour, only 43% are credited end-to-end within that timeframe globally.

The bottleneck happens at last-mile settlement — the actual crediting of funds to recipients' accounts.

For internet-native work, where contributors collaborate across jurisdictions in real-time, this friction is unacceptable.

Stablecoins are emerging as the settlement layer for digital work

Stablecoins fundamentally change the economics and speed of global payments.

Instead of relying on correspondent banking networks that operate across intermediaries and close overnight, stablecoins provide:

  • 24/7 programmable settlement
  • Near-instant finality
  • Global availability without geographic restrictions
  • Reduced reliance on banking intermediaries

McKinsey estimates that stablecoin payment volume reached approximately $390 billion in 2025, more than doubling year-over-year. Importantly, this data isolates payment-like activity: commercial transfers, payroll, remittances, and settlement between counterparties.

For crypto-native teams, stablecoins are already the de facto payroll infrastructure.

But the opportunity extends far beyond crypto-native recipients. Many creators and freelancers prefer to receive fiat currency — particularly in regions where crypto adoption is still nascent or where they need immediate local currency for expenses.

Stablecoins solve this by acting as the settlement rail rather than the final payout format. A payment can be executed in USDC across borders in seconds, then automatically off-ramped to the recipient's local bank account or mobile money wallet. This provides the speed and economics of stablecoin settlement with the familiarity of fiat currency receipt.

The infrastructure for this is emerging rapidly. Payment networks are building fiat on/off-ramps that connect stablecoin rails to local banking systems, mobile money operators, and payment providers across emerging markets. This means recipients who've never held crypto can still benefit from instant, low-cost stablecoin settlement behind the scenes.

The problem isn't settlement anymore — it's execution infrastructure.

The real bottleneck: operational complexity, not settlement speed

Moving money is easy. Managing payments for distributed teams at scale is hard.

Most crypto-native work follows this pattern:

  • A creator publishes content for a campaign
  • A freelancer delivers a milestone
  • A hackathon winner completes a bounty
  • A contributor ships code for a protocol upgrade

But executing the payment creates operational overhead across several areas:

Bulk execution complexity
Paying 50 people means managing 50 wallet addresses, verifying each one is correct, executing the transaction, and tracking who received what. One typo = funds sent to the wrong address permanently. Even on a single chain, this is error-prone and time-consuming.

Multi-chain routing (when needed)
In creator economies and campaign work, recipients often want different chains and tokens. A client pays in USDC on Arbitrum, but creators want USDT on Solana, ETH on Base, or direct deposit to Coinbase. Someone has to manually bridge, swap, and route each payment.

Privacy exposure
On-chain payments are public by default. When paying contributors, everyone can see who got paid what. This creates internal comparison problems ("why did she get more than me?") and exposes competitive budget data to other agencies and brands.

Conditional releases
Blockchain payments have no chargeback mechanism. Once sent, funds can't be reversed. If a deliverable is unsatisfactory or a milestone isn't complete, there's no standardized way to handle escrow-based releases or refunds.

Reconciliation overhead
Tracking who got paid what, when, and why requires manual spreadsheet work and cross-chain block explorer checking. For recurring payments (weekly, monthly), this compounds every cycle.

This isn't a coordination problem. Teams know who needs to be paid.

It's an infrastructure problem. The tools to execute these payments programmatically don't exist.

What we learned coordinating 300+ campaigns

We lived this problem at scale.

Here's what actually happened:

The multi-chain nightmare
A client pays us in USDC on Arbitrum. Creators want USDT on Solana, ETH on Base, or direct deposit to Coinbase. We'd spend hours bridging, swapping, and reconciling each payout manually.

The privacy crisis
All payments were public on-chain. Creators would compare payouts and create internal drama. Competitors could track our campaign budgets. Brands could reverse-engineer our margins.

The error rate
Copy-pasting 100+ wallet addresses into multi-send tools meant inevitable mistakes. One wrong character and thousands of dollars vanish permanently.

The coordination tax
We spent more time managing payment logistics than actually running campaigns. The operational overhead was unsustainable.

So we built internal tooling to solve it.

We used NEAR's intent API to enable:

  • Client pays once in any token
  • Each creator selects their preferred chain and token
  • One transaction executes the entire batch
  • Everyone receives what they want

It worked. Cut our payout time from hours to minutes.

But we were only solving half the problem.

The other half was privacy.

The missing infrastructure

Privacy is critical for payroll-style payments

Public blockchains introduced radical transparency — powerful for DeFi and trustless protocols, problematic for payroll and contributor payments.

When payments execute on public ledgers:

  • Contributor payouts become visible
  • Campaign budgets become visible
  • Treasury activity becomes visible

This creates real operational problems:

Internal friction
"Why did she get 500 USDC and I only got 300?" — Contributors screenshot payments and use them to negotiate or create resentment.

Competitive intelligence
Other agencies can track campaign spend and undercut pricing. Brands can infer margins and renegotiate terms.

Operational exposure
Teams unintentionally reveal hiring budgets, retention bonuses, and financial runway.

Traditional payroll systems (ADP, Gusto, Rippling) have privacy built in. On-chain payment systems don't.

We integrated Magicblock's private ephemeral rollups on Solana to solve this. It breaks the link between sender and recipient while preserving on-chain settlement.

Payments happen. Settlement is verifiable. But the connection between who paid and who received stays confidential.

This combination — flexible cross-chain routing + private settlement — is foundational for real-world payroll infrastructure on-chain.

Escrow and dispute infrastructure is the hardest unsolved problem

Digital work is inherently conditional.

Projects evolve. Deliverables get revised. Stakeholders disagree on completion criteria.

Traditional finance handles this through:

  • Chargebacks (issuer-mediated reversals)
  • Escrow services (third-party fund holding)
  • Dispute resolution (mediation and arbitration)

Blockchain payments remove most of these mechanisms.

Once funds are sent, they cannot be reversed. There's no fraud department. No chargeback button.

As crypto-native teams scale, conditional payment infrastructure becomes essential.

Here's what needs to exist:

Programmable escrow
Funds are locked at deal creation. Released when both parties agree. If disagreement occurs, funds remain locked until resolution.

Dispute arbitration
Who decides when parties can't agree? Options include:

  • On-chain arbitration DAOs
  • Reputation-based mediator networks
  • AI-assisted dispute resolution
  • Cryptographic proof-of-work verification

None of these feel production-ready yet.

Partial releases
Work often happens in stages. A designer delivers three mockups, gets paid for two, disputes the third. The payment system needs to support partial conditional releases tied to milestone verification.

Without this infrastructure, large-scale coordination of crypto-native work becomes fragile.

We believe escrow and dispute infrastructure will be as foundational to on-chain labor markets as AMMs are to DeFi.

Beyond crypto: Stablecoins as rails, fiat as destination

The infrastructure we're building isn't just for crypto-native teams and recipients.

Most freelancers and creators globally still operate in fiat. They're getting paid through:

  • PayPal (5-7% fees for cross-border)
  • Wire transfers (3-5 days, $25-50 in fees)
  • Platforms like Upwork (20% platform cut)

Stablecoins can serve as the settlement layer without being the final payout format.

Here's how it works:

  1. Payer executes payment in USDC (instant, low-cost, global)
  2. Payment routes through stablecoin rails
  3. Recipient receives their choice of:
    • Local fiat in their bank account
    • Mobile money (M-Pesa, GCash, etc.)
    • Stablecoins in a wallet
    • Direct to exchange account

Payment infrastructure providers are building fiat on/off-ramps that connect stablecoin settlement to local banking systems, mobile money operators, and payment providers globally. This means recipients don't need to understand crypto, hold wallets, or manage tokens.

They just receive money — faster and cheaper than traditional rails.

For the payer, this solves a critical problem: pay everyone the same way (stablecoins) while each recipient gets what they want.

This unlocks a massive market: any team paying people globally can benefit from stablecoin economics (speed, cost, programmability) without requiring recipients to adopt crypto.

The competitive landscape

The market for digital labor payments is fragmenting across multiple categories — each solving adjacent but fundamentally different problems.

Global payroll platforms adding crypto

Deel and Remote dominate traditional global payroll for distributed teams.

They solve:

  • Fiat-first payroll across 100+ countries
  • Employment compliance (W2/contractor classification)
  • Tax withholding and reporting
  • Benefits administration

In February 2025, Deel partnered with MoonPay to add stablecoin payouts as an optional feature for their $22 billion annual payroll volume. This targets workers who want faster cross-border settlement or protection from currency volatility in high-inflation regions.

What they don't solve:
Deel processes payroll in fiat, then optionally converts to stablecoins at payout. Recipients can't choose their payout chain or token. Payments aren't private (still visible on public ledgers). No conditional releases tied to deliverables. Not designed for ad-hoc campaign coordination or bulk bounty distributions.

They're fiat payroll systems with crypto as a withdrawal option — built for traditional employment relationships, not crypto-native coordination workflows.

Crypto-native payroll for Web3 companies

Toku is purpose-built for Web3 organizations hiring full-time employees globally.

They solve:

  • Stablecoin-native payroll with compliance
  • Token compensation and vesting schedules
  • EOR (Employer of Record) services for crypto companies
  • Tax reporting across 100+ countries

Toku operates as a crypto-first alternative to Deel for web3 companies that want native stablecoin payroll infrastructure.

What they don't solve:
Toku is optimized for recurring employee payroll, not project-based coordination. You can't pay 50 hackathon winners with different payout preferences in one transaction. No recipient flexibility (workers receive what the company sends, on the chain the company chooses). Public payments (no privacy layer). Not designed for campaign distributions or ad-hoc contributor networks.

They're built for full-time Web3 employment, not distributed contributor coordination or one-off campaign payouts.

Crypto invoicing and B2B settlement

Request Finance handles crypto invoicing, accounts payable/receivable, and B2B settlement.

They solve:

  • Creating on-chain invoices
  • Batch invoice payments across multiple chains
  • Crypto-to-fiat conversion
  • Accounting and audit trails

Request processes $1B+ in payment volume, primarily from DAOs and Web3 companies managing vendor payments and contractor invoices.

What they don't solve:
Invoice-based workflows where the payer initiates each payment. No recipient flexibility — invoices specify the exact token and chain. Public payments (all transactions visible). No escrow or conditional releases. Not designed for campaign coordination where you need to pay 100 people at once with each person choosing their own payout preference.

They're optimized for B2B invoicing workflows, not bulk contributor coordination with flexible payouts.

Agent commerce infrastructure

Stripe and PayPal are both aggressively moving into agentic commerce.

Stripe launched its Agent Toolkit (SDK for Python/TypeScript) and Agentic Commerce Suite in late 2024/early 2025:

  • Agent Toolkit: Lets AI agents create payment links, manage subscriptions, issue virtual cards for purchases
  • Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs): Programmable payment credentials for agents to buy things on behalf of users
  • Agentic Commerce Suite: Full stack for merchants to sell products through AI agents (integrates with Anthropic Claude, Perplexity, etc.)

Stripe's focus: Agent-to-merchant commerce. Agents booking flights, buying products, managing subscriptions, spending on ads.

PayPal launched PYUSD stablecoin (now on Ethereum, Solana, and Stellar as of September 2025):

  • "Pay with Crypto" for merchants (0.99% transaction fees, 90% cheaper than international credit cards)
  • Cross-border merchant payments and remittances
  • Yield on PYUSD holdings (3.7-4% rewards)
  • "PayFi" for SMB working capital using PYUSD
  • Testing merchant bill payment features

PayPal's focus: Merchant cross-border commerce and business liquidity. Making it easier for businesses to accept crypto payments and access working capital.

Other agentic payment players:

Skyfire: Crypto-centric agent payments using USD Coin (USDC), KYA (Know Your Agent) identity verification, $9.5M raised from a16z and Coinbase Ventures

Coinbase x402 Protocol: HTTP-based micropayments for API access (agents pay per API call using HTTP 402 status codes)

What none of them solve:
These are all built for commerce (agents buying things, accessing APIs, merchant checkout). None are designed for coordinated labor payments — paying 50 hackathon winners across different chains with recipient flexibility, privacy-preserving payroll for distributed teams, conditional milestone releases for deliverables, or bulk campaign distributions where each person chooses their payout preference.

They're optimized for agent-as-consumer, not payments-for-work coordination.

The gap we're addressing

None of these categories solve the workflow we encountered running 300+ campaigns:

"A project pays on Arbitrum. 50 creators want different chains and tokens. Payments need to be private. Releases are conditional on deliverable approval. This needs to happen every week."

This sits at the intersection of:

  • Multi-chain execution complexity (bridging, swapping, routing)
  • Recipient flexibility (each person chooses their payout preference)
  • Privacy-preserving settlement (confidential payroll)
  • Conditional payment releases (escrow tied to deliverables)
  • Operational scale (bulk execution without manual overhead)

Existing solutions force tradeoffs:

Use Deel → Fiat-first, no chain flexibility, no privacy, no conditional releases
Use Toku → Employee payroll only, no recipient choice, public payments
Use Request → Invoice workflow, no batch flexibility, public payments
Use Stripe/PayPal → Built for commerce, not labor; no multi-chain flexibility

We're building the infrastructure that eliminates these tradeoffs.

Use cases: Where this infrastructure matters

1. Crypto-native marketing and creator campaigns

Agencies and protocols run campaigns with hundreds of creators globally.

Current workflow:

  • Pay agency in one token
  • Agency manually bridges/swaps to each creator's preferred chain
  • All payments are public (budget exposure)
  • No conditional releases (trust-based milestone verification)

With coordination infrastructure:

  • Agency pays once
  • Each creator selects their payout preference
  • Private settlement (no budget leakage)
  • Escrow releases on content approval

2. Hackathons and dev bounties

Hackathon organizers pay winners across global teams.

Current workflow:

  • Manually collect wallet addresses
  • Execute separate transactions per winner
  • Public payments (all prize amounts visible)
  • No recourse for incomplete submissions

With coordination infrastructure:

  • Winners submit payout preferences
  • Bulk execution in one transaction
  • Private distributions
  • Conditional releases based on code delivery

3. DAO contributor payments

DAOs coordinate contributors across development, community, and operations.

Current workflow:

  • Gnosis Safe multisigs
  • Manual spreadsheets
  • Copy-paste wallet addresses
  • Public treasury activity

With coordination infrastructure:

  • Scheduled recurring payments
  • Bulk contributor payouts
  • Private compensation (no internal comparison)
  • Conditional releases tied to shipped work

4. Distributed freelance teams in crypto

Crypto projects hire translators, moderators, designers, and developers globally.

Current workflow:

  • Off-chain task tracking (Notion, Airtable)
  • Manual payment execution per contributor
  • No privacy (everyone sees compensation)
  • Trust-based milestone verification

With coordination infrastructure:

  • Task completion triggers payment release
  • Cross-chain payout flexibility
  • Private payroll
  • Escrow for disputed deliverables

The agent economy: A parallel evolution

We're also seeing the early formation of an agent-driven labor economy.

AI agents can already:

  • Coordinate research tasks
  • Negotiate service contracts
  • Manage contributor pools
  • Generate deliverables

But every workflow breaks at the same point: payment execution.

An agent can:

  • Negotiate payment terms ✅
  • Verify deliverable quality ✅
  • Generate invoices ✅
  • Execute the payment ❌

At payment time, a human intervenes.

Agent payment infrastructure is being built — but for a different use case

The agent payment companies (Skyfire, x402, PaymanAI) are solving for:

  • Micropayments: Paying per API call
  • Agent-to-service: Agents paying for SaaS tools
  • Agent-to-agent commerce: Autonomous service transactions

These are critical primitives.

But they don't solve for coordinated labor payments:

  • Paying 50 contributors across different chains
  • Privacy-preserving payroll
  • Conditional releases tied to human deliverable verification
  • Bulk payment execution with recipient flexibility

Where the overlap will happen

As agents become more capable, they'll start managing human labor workflows:

  • An agent negotiates a content deal on behalf of a creator
  • An agent coordinates hackathon prize distributions
  • An agent manages recurring payroll for distributed teams

At that point, the agent needs infrastructure for bulk, cross-chain, privacy-preserving, conditional payments.

That's the future convergence point.

Agent payment rails handle the agent-to-agent layer.
Coordination infrastructure handles the agent-to-humans-at-scale layer.

Both will need to exist.

What we're building: Loofta Pay

Loofta Pay is programmable payment infrastructure for crypto-native work.

Built on stablecoin settlement rails, we enable teams to pay distributed contributors with recipient flexibility, privacy-preserving execution, and conditional milestone releases.

It's built around five core capabilities:

1. Cross-chain multi-send with flexible payout options

Pay in one token. Recipients choose their payout format: different chain, different token, or direct fiat off-ramp to their bank account.

Built on NEAR's intent API for routing and integrated with fiat on/off-ramp providers, this eliminates:

  • Manual bridging
  • Swapping across DEXs
  • Copy-pasting wallet addresses
  • Multi-transaction execution
  • Setting up wallets for non-crypto recipients

One payment. Many recipients. Each gets what they want — crypto or fiat.

2. Private payroll settlement

Payments execute on-chain. Settlement is verifiable. But the sender-recipient link stays confidential.

Built with Magicblock's private ephemeral rollups on Solana, this prevents:

  • Internal compensation comparison
  • Competitive budget exposure
  • Treasury activity leakage

Public settlement. Private relationships.

3. Programmable deals

A deal is a set of tasks with conditional payment releases.

Structure:

  • Define deliverables and milestones
  • Fund the deal upfront (escrowed)
  • Payments unlock when conditions are met

This connects work agreements and payment execution programmatically.

4. Scheduled and bulk payments

Stop manually executing the same 50 payments every week.

Set up:

  • Recurring contributor payments
  • Scheduled milestone releases
  • Bulk campaign distributions

Automate what's repetitive. Focus on coordination.

5. API-first for human and agent workflows

We're designing for both:

  • Human-driven payments: Teams managing contributor networks
  • Agent-managed payments: AI systems coordinating labor workflows

The same primitives work for both:

  • Identity-based routing (email, handle, or wallet)
  • Programmable release conditions
  • Dispute and escrow mechanisms

The unsolved problem: Disputes

This is the part we're still figuring out.

Digital work is conditional. Projects evolve. Deliverables get revised. Stakeholders disagree on quality.

We've implemented escrow — funds lock until both parties agree to release.

But what happens when they don't agree?

Who decides? How do you make it:

  • Fast (not weeks of arbitration)
  • Fair (not biased toward payer or payee)
  • Decentralized (not reliant on centralized authority)

We've explored:

  • On-chain arbitration DAOs (slow, governance-heavy)
  • Reputation-based mediator networks (centralization risk)
  • AI-assisted dispute resolution (accuracy concerns)
  • Cryptographic proof-of-work verification (limited applicability)

None feel production-ready.

But we know this: if autonomous agents are going to transact at scale, programmatic dispute resolution is non-negotiable.

This is the biggest open problem in digital labor payments.

And it's critical infrastructure for the next generation of work coordination.

Why we're positioned to solve this

We didn't theorize about payment infrastructure.

We ran 300+ campaigns. Coordinated 4,000 creators. Processed $100,000+ across multiple chains.

We know:

  • What breaks in production at scale
  • Where the operational overhead compounds
  • What manual processes teams are duct-taping together
  • Where the pain is acute enough that people will switch

Most payment infrastructure is built by people who've never executed bulk crypto payroll for distributed teams.

We've done it thousands of times. We built the tool we desperately needed to survive operationally.

Now we're turning that into infrastructure.

Market opportunity

The global payroll market exceeds $50 trillion annually.

At the same time:

  • The creator economy is expanding (Goldman Sachs: $480B by 2027)
  • Freelance labor is becoming mainstream (Upwork: $1.5T in U.S. earnings)
  • Remote collaboration is the default
  • Crypto-native work is professionalizing
  • AI agents are entering economic workflows

These shifts suggest that payments for digital work will need to evolve fundamentally.

We need programmable payment infrastructure that integrates:

  • Multi-chain execution (intent-based routing)
  • Recipient flexibility (choose your own payout)
  • Privacy-preserving settlement (confidential payroll)
  • Conditional releases (escrow and disputes)
  • Identity-based routing (email, handle, or wallet)

Into a single layer.

That's the market we're building for.

What's next

We're launching Loofta Pay in the coming months.

Right now, we're in private beta with early users: agencies, DAOs, and distributed teams who've been living this problem.

When we launch, we'll be ready for:

  • Crypto teams paying contributors across chains
  • Agencies coordinating creator campaigns
  • DAOs managing grants and bounties
  • Hackathon organizers distributing prizes
  • Any team building programmable, private, cross-chain payment workflows

If you're building in this space — as a team coordinating payments or as infrastructure enabling new workflows — we'd love to connect.

The future of work is internet-native.

Payment infrastructure needs to catch up.

Loofta Pay is launching soon.
Interested in early access or partnership opportunities? Reach out.

Additional reading

Goldman Sachs. (2023). The Creator Economy Could Approach Half a Trillion Dollars by 2027.

Upwork. (2024). Freelance Forward Economist Report.

European Central Bank. (2023). Retail Cross-Border Payments Report.

Bank for International Settlements. (2024). Cross-Border Payments Progress Report.

McKinsey & Company. (2025). Stablecoin Payment Volume Analysis.

NEAR Protocol. (n.d.). Intent-Based Transaction Routing Documentation.

Magicblock. (n.d.). Private Ephemeral Rollups on Solana.

Skyfire. (2024). AI Agent Payment Infrastructure.

Coinbase. (2024). x402 Protocol: HTTP-Based Agent Payments.

Natural Pay. (2024). Agentic Payments Thesis Memo.