Digital currency is coming for payroll. Bitcoin and stablecoins are fighting for that future.
Andy Maren — May 1, 2026
I want to talk about money.
Specifically, about the fact that the way we move money to workers is going through its most significant structural shift since direct deposit. And most HR and payroll teams are watching it happen from the sidelines.
Full disclosure before we go further: I hold Bitcoin. Have for a few years. I'm not going to pretend that doesn't color how I see this space — it does. What I'm going to try to do is be honest about what I think is happening and why I think HR and pay leaders need to be paying attention, regardless of where they land personally on crypto.
November 2025: the moment I started paying closer attention
On November 7, 2025, Paystand — a B2B payments platform that has processed over $20 billion in volume — acquired Bitwage, the company that built the first Bitcoin payroll infrastructure back in 2014.
If you're not familiar with Bitwage: they spent over a decade building the compliance infrastructure, international corridors, and payout rails to let workers receive wages in Bitcoin, stablecoins, or local fiat in nearly 200 countries. They served over 90,000 workers and 4,500 businesses. They were, for a long time, mostly a product for crypto-native companies and international freelancers.
When a B2B enterprise payments company with SoftBank backing acquires that infrastructure, something has shifted.
Paystand's CEO put it plainly: "Stablecoins just crossed from crypto curiosity to regulated money movement." What Paystand saw in Bitwage wasn't a niche payroll product — they saw the global payout rails that enterprise finance has been missing. And they bought it.
That acquisition is the clearest signal I've seen that legitimate payroll infrastructure companies are serious about digital currency. Not as a marketing play. As core product strategy.
January 2026: fast food gets there before HR tech does
On January 21, 2026, Steak 'n Shake announced it would pay hourly employees a Bitcoin bonus of $0.21 for every hour worked at company-operated locations — starting March 1, with rewards vesting after two years. The program runs through Fold, a publicly traded bitcoin financial services company.
Let that land for a second.
A fast-food chain with more than 10,000 hourly workers got further into Bitcoin compensation than most enterprise HR platforms have. The bonus is roughly 1% of the federal minimum wage per hour — not transformative on its own, but the structure is interesting: it functions like a long-term savings program with a vesting mechanic that mirrors how tech companies use equity. Stay two years, and you collect your accumulated Bitcoin.
Steak 'n Shake also holds $10 million in Bitcoin on its corporate balance sheet, accepts BTC via the Lightning Network at US locations, and has seen same-store sales jump more than 10% since rolling out its bitcoin strategy. This is not a stunt.
Fold formalized its Bitcoin Bonus Program for employers in April 2026 — letting companies deliver recurring bitcoin bonuses with built-in vesting without changing their existing payroll systems or taking on custody responsibilities. Fold handles conversion, custody, and employee delivery. The employer just designates a dollar amount on their existing payroll cadence. Simple Mining, a bitcoin mining company in Iowa, is allocating 1% of every employee's pay into Bitcoin, redeemable at year-end.
As Fold's CEO put it: "Cash hits an account and it's gone by Friday." The Bitcoin bonus is designed to be the thing that stays.
February 2026: stablecoins arrive at enterprise scale
Around the same time, the stablecoin side of this story was having its own moment.
On February 6, Papaya Global launched Banco Wallet — a global workforce payment product letting employees receive wages in stablecoins across 180+ countries. Four days later, Deel — which processes $22 billion in payroll annually across 150+ countries — announced its stablecoin payroll offering through a partnership with MoonPay, rolling out first in the UK and EU.
The distinction between Bitcoin and stablecoins matters a lot in payroll, and it's worth being precise about it.
A stablecoin — USDC, USDT, and others — is pegged to the value of a traditional currency, usually the US dollar. Its value doesn't fluctuate. That makes it operationally viable for payroll in a way that Bitcoin, with its volatility, currently is not for most organizations. You can commit to paying someone $1,000 in USDC and know exactly what that means when it lands. You cannot make the same commitment in Bitcoin.
Stablecoins are solving a real logistics problem: cross-border payments are slow, expensive, and opaque. Stablecoin settlement is near-instant, borderless, and significantly cheaper. For organizations with global teams and international contractors, this is genuinely compelling.
There are also significant open questions — about which blockchain the settlement runs on, whether transaction data is visible publicly, state-level wage laws, IRS classification of digital asset wages, and whether your compliance infrastructure is actually ready. I wrote about the compliance landscape in an earlier post and those concerns haven't gone away.
Where I actually land on all of this
I'm going to be honest about my own view, because I think that's more useful than a false neutrality.
I think stablecoins are the near-term answer for global payroll infrastructure. The volatility problem with Bitcoin is real, and for HR and payroll professionals who are responsible for people's livelihoods, building operational processes around an asset that can drop 30% in a week is not something I'd recommend right now. The Deel and Papaya announcements matter. The Paystand/Bitwage acquisition matters. The infrastructure is being built, the regulatory framework is arriving, and stablecoin payroll is going to be a standard offering across global HR platforms within three to five years.
But I also think Bitcoin is the long-term story. Not as the settlement currency — stablecoins win that — but as the savings layer. What Fold and Steak 'n Shake are building, what Block Rewards is doing in Canada with their Bitcoin Savings Plan as an alternative to RRSP contribution, what's happening with 401(k) access to Bitcoin as the Trump administration's executive order works through the Labor Department — this is the infrastructure for Bitcoin to become a standard employee benefit, not just an investment.
The organizations that are starting to think about this now — even if they're just asking the question, even if they're just putting it on the agenda — will be better positioned than the ones that wait for the trend to arrive fully formed.
HODL, as they say.
What I'd actually recommend
If you're an HR or pay leader, here's what's worth doing right now:
Know what your platforms are building. Workday, SAP, Ceridian, UKG — every major HCM has a digital currency roadmap. Ask your account team what it looks like. If they don't have an answer, that's also information.
Understand the regulatory landscape in your jurisdictions. The GENIUS Act (passed in 2025) created a federal framework for stablecoin regulation. Most states still have wage laws requiring payment in US legal tender, which shapes how stablecoin payroll can be structured for employees vs. contractors.
Ask the privacy question. Most stablecoin payroll products settle on public blockchains where transaction data is visible. Employee salary information on a public ledger should raise immediate questions for any HR professional who's spent a career protecting pay data.
Get curious before you get pressured. The Fold/Steak 'n Shake news is going to reach your employees. The Deel stablecoin launch is going to come up in contract conversations. The bitcoin 401(k) question is already in the news. Better to have a point of view ready than to be caught flat-footed.
This is a fast-moving space. I'll keep writing about it.
Update your curiosity.
— Andy
Andy Maren is the founder of Trailhouse Solutions, an advisory firm for HR and payroll leaders navigating the shift to agentic AI and modern HR technology. She holds Bitcoin personally and writes about what's actually happening in the market — without the keynote optimism.
