29.03.2024

Aliant to Pay Part of Employees’ Compensation Packages in Bitcoin

In a press release on Oct. 16, Aliant said that the offer reflected a desire that employees become invested customers in the shift to digital currency.

United States merchant services provider and payment processing firm Aliant Payments will be paying each of its employees part of their compensation package in cryptocurrency.

Aliant’s evolving crypto payments processing solution

Aliant launched its crypto processing system for merchants, dubbed CryptoBucks, back in 2017 and developed a proprietary, fully compliant solution in July 2018 to process crypto payments, converting them to USD, and offering merchants next day payouts.

In a statement, Aliant CEO Eric Brown proposed that:

“Adoption happens when you’re able to earn cryptocurrency, and then go on to spend it.”

Brown further underscored that with the inclusion of cryptocurrency into employee compensation packages, each member of the Aliant team will have “a vested interest in cryptocurrency not just as something they work on in the office.”

Merchant solutions and in-house employee adoption

Alongside Aliant, other industry firms have been working to diversify crypto processing solutions for merchants.

Blockchain technology firm Bitfury Group has launched e-commerce software for merchants and several other tools – including an open-source Bitcoin wallet and a hardware payments terminal – in a bid to drive wider adoption of Bitcoin’s off-chain scalability layer called Lightning Network.

Meanwhile, workplace initiatives to drive crypto adoption among employees include the recent move by Big Four audit firm Deloitte to enable staff to pay for canteen purchases using a mobile Bitcoin wallet.

Bank of Ireland Execs Back Out of Testifying in OneCoin Scam Hearings

Bank of Ireland (BOI) executives have backed out of the testimony before the United States Government in the criminal proceedings regarding a $400 million worth money laundering scheme through cryptocurrency scam OneCoin.

No testimony on voluntary basis

As fintech-focused news outlet FinanceFeed reported on Oct. 11, the U.S. Government filed a Letter with the Court on Oct. 10, in which it clarified that over the past week it had tried to get voluntary witness testimony in Ireland. However, the witnesses changed their stance toward the prospect of testifying and would now testify only in response to compulsory process under the U.S.-Ireland Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty (MLAT).

The four witnesses at BOI who were to join a trial in the case against the accused in custody, Mark Scott, were head of BOI’s Anti-Money Laundering team Diane Sands, BOI foreign direct investment team member Deirdre Ceannt, former executive VP and relationship director Derek Collins, and Greg Begley.

Since the case involves the Central Authority of Ireland, the Government submitted an MLAT request to the authority to convince the witnesses to testify through closed-circuit television.

Parties involved in the OneCoin crypto pyramid scheme

As previously reported by Cointelegraph, Scott is accused of conspiracy to commit money laundering. From 2016 to 2018, Scott laundered almost $400 million in proceeds from OneCoin through a series of private equity funds in the British Virgin Islands with accounts at banks in the Cayman Islands, known as Fenero Funds.

Scott also had corporate bank accounts at BOI, through which he allegedly laundered over $300 million in OneCoin fraud proceeds.

In March, a U.S. District Attorney charged the founders of OneCoin, Konstantin Ignatov and his sister Ruja Ignatova with  “wire fraud, securities fraud, and money laundering offenses”, wherein they allegedly lured investors to contribute “billions of dollars in the fraudulent cryptocurrency.”

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