Reverse BitPay - receive fiat payments, get paid in Bitcoin

There are a lot of projects in the Bitcoin space that act as Bitcoin to fiat bridges - they accept Bitcoin and sometimes other currencies on your behalf and pay you in fiat at the end of the day. However, there doesn't appear to be anything out there that does the reverse for you - allow you to accept fiat payments and pay you in Bitcoin (the closest would probably be BitWage, but that project is aimed at employers paying their employees, rather than anyone being able to accept wire payments seamlessly). A project like that may be a useful part of the "rebittance" space.

So how might a project like this look? I would imagine it would be a mix between a bank and a Bitcoin exchange. You would sign up for an account, probably verify your identity for KYC purposes, and then you would be ready to start accepting payments. You would receive a segregated bank account number, similarly to what you would get in a bank or a credit union, and whatever funds would be deposited to the account through a wire transfer (or whatever other means commonly used in US and other countries that are averse to wire transfers for some reason) would be instantly converted into BTC at the current rate.

This approach, if deployed in some key countries, would allow for much easier flow of funds internationally. Perhaps paired with a mailbox rental service, you could potentially create a virtual presence in any country, receive local payments and get paid internationally. This would allow you to tap into the global marketplace from anywhere in the world and still get paid in a timely and affordable fashion. You could either keep your earnings in Bitcoin, or convert it on the spot back into your local currency through a rebittance service or perhaps a local exchange.

Now, if you extend this solution into the Crypto 2.0 space, the service would essentially work as a fiat -> fiat-denominated crypto gateway. This would allow you to receive payments in any currency while still having an easy way to convert between everything, rather than using Bitcoin as the intermediate currency.

How likely is it that we will see a project like this any time soon? Pretty unlikely in the form described. You would probably need to start with some forward-looking bank or a credit union that has access to the legacy banking system, figure out whether it is legal for them to set up accounts for entities in another country and see if they would be willing to take the risk associated with handling money like this. Maybe once the crypto space is better established we would see something like this come about, but that can be still ways away.

EDIT:

Relevant discussions:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3hack0/reverse_bitpay_receive_fiat_payments_get_paid_in/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/3hack1/reverse_bitpay_receive_fiat_payments_get_paid_in/
• https://twitter.com/MeherRoy/status/633180115183235072