Rise offers a payroll platform that lets companies fund accounts in fiat or crypto and enables contractors to choose payouts in bank transfers, crypto, or a mix using smart contracts for instant payments. The platform is built on Arbitrum and the company says it can facilitate contractor payments in 90 fiat currencies and 100 cryptocurrencies across Ethereum and Ethereum-compatible chains including Arbitrum, Polygon, Optimism and Avalanche; Bitcoin is on the roadmap. Each contractor receives a Rise ID — an ERC-725 NFT containing KYC status, work and payment history — which can be authorized with crypto wallets and services. Rise started as a marketplace in January 2021, pivoted to a paycheck service in June 2021 and launched the current product in April 2022. The service is available in 190 countries; the company has onboarded about 500 contractors and 70 companies and says customers have sent over $10 million in payments through the platform. The team of 14 is working on money-transmitter licenses in some U.S. states and local licenses in Europe, and plans to launch an employer-of-record service for full-time salaries and a DeFi "High Yield" product in the future.

Total raised

$4M

Funding rounds

1

Latest round

Seed

Latest activity

May 2023