How to pay bills with crypto

Getting paid in crypto is great, right? As we mentioned in our guide on invoicing clients in crypto, you can receive payments almost instantly from clients anywhere in the world without the high costs of foreign exchange conversions or bank transfer fees.

Getting paid in cryptocurrency offers freelancers and companies several key advantages. First, it allows for faster and cheaper transactions, particularly for international payments, by avoiding the high fees and long processing times associated with traditional bank transfers. Cryptocurrencies, especially stablecoins, offer a low-volatility option, ensuring that freelancers can protect the value of their earnings.

Furthermore, payment networks like Ethereum or alternative blockchains offer transparent, lower-cost, and faster transaction processing compared to traditional financial systems.

These advantages make crypto a viable and attractive option for businesses in the growing Web3 space.

Getting paid in crypto is great for freelancers and companies. But what about paying bills within crypto? Now that we consider having a crypto treasury, we can use it. That's why we're going to look at the benefits of paying bills with crypto. 

Paying your bills with crypto offers many advantages:

• No need to deal with various banking details that differ from country to country (IBAN, account numbers, BIC/SWIFT, IFSC…). Crypto addresses are the same everywhere in the world.
• Payments are processed in seconds, whereas some traditional finance crossborder payments can take several days. Many cross-border payments must pass through intermediary banks, making the process opaque, and it can be difficult to track the status of the payment. If the payment doesn’t go through, recovering the funds can be a real headache.
• Fees are significantly lower, especially for cross-border or foreign currency payments. Over a year, the cumulative fees in traditional finance can add up to a substantial amount.
• On the accounting side, crypto payments save time with automatic reconciliation. With solutions like Request Finance, the transaction hash, which acts as proof of payment, is automatically linked to the invoice—no more manually matching payments to invoices.

For all these reasons, paying your bills with crypto is a major convenience.

But first, how do you get a crypto wallet address, and how do you buy or receive cryptocurrency?

It's important to distinguish between centralized and decentralized wallets. If you open an account with Binance, for example, your wallet address is centralized—meaning Binance holds the address and cryptocurrency for you. You don’t directly own the crypto. However, if you download apps like MetaMask or Trust Wallet, you're entering the world of decentralization. This means you directly control your wallet addresses, a concept known as "self-custody." You own your crypto, and no one else does. 😊 You can learn more about this notion of self-custody in our previous article.

Once you’ve downloaded and created your wallet address, apps like MetaMask and Trust Wallet allow you to buy cryptocurrency directly using your credit card.

Important: When entering the crypto world, you'll encounter different blockchains for transactions (Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, etc.). You can think of these like payment rails in traditional finance (SWIFT, SEPA, ACH…). No matter which blockchain you use, you will always need a small amount of the blockchain’s native cryptocurrency to pay for transaction fees. For example, on the Ethereum network, you’ll need some Ether to cover gas fees.

Once your decentralized wallet address is set up and you have a small amount of the native cryptocurrency from your chosen blockchain, you can now receive and pay in crypto directly from your wallet.

Now imagine being able to pay your bills with crypto, even for invoices denominated in fiat from non-Web3 businesses. What a game changer! No more worrying about off-ramping, calculating exchange rates, or managing multiple currencies.

Whether you're a freelancer or a business, with Request Finance, you can manage both fiat and crypto invoices all in one place by connecting your decentralized wallet.