In the past one decade, a $1 billion jobs market — microwork — has emerged around technologies that split activities into piecemeal tasks to be completed by many people over the internet, mostly using mobile devices.

“We trained 200 Kenyan youth to access digital microwork from global platforms using a mobile app and integrated [digital currency wallet]. Our pilot tested how [digital currency] could reduce the costs and challenges of sending and receiving cross-border micropayments over a three-month period,” said Mercy Corps Ventures Senior Managing Director, Scott Onder.

In the trial, participants were paid a few seconds after task-completion, [...] with fees at approximately $0.01. The payments were temporarily stored in [a digital wallet], and could be cashed-out at any time to Kenya’s mobile money platform, M-Pesa, with the conversion enabled by Kotani Pay’s off-ramp technologies.

Among the commonly used options for international online jobs are PayPal, Skrill and Payoneer, some of which have policies for withholding payments without explanation and higher charges for lower payouts.

“High transaction fees, especially for lower payouts, mean that microworkers often forfeit a significant portion of earnings (with a global weighted average cost of 4.71% but in some cases up to 30% of gross earnings), said MCV, adding that these barriers can be overcome using cryptocurrency.