# How to pay contractors, and know what you paid

URL: https://www.orla.finance/en/pay-contractors
Markdown twin of that page. Append `.md` to any Orla page URL to get one.

Paying a contractor takes a minute. Knowing in January what you paid, to whom and on whose say-so is what costs an evening a month, and this guide covers both halves.

### Three things to settle before any money moves

Each is cheaper to settle now than to reconstruct in January.

#### Is this person a contractor?

The IRS puts the test on control: a worker is an independent contractor when the payer has the right to direct only the result of the work, not what will be done and how. Most countries have the same idea under other names. Orla does not classify anyone; that call belongs to your accountant or lawyer, and it comes before any payment.

#### What the agreement says about money

Rate, currency, when it is due, which rail, and who pays the transfer fee. One line in the agreement that names the rail and the fee saves a dispute later, and if the rail is a stablecoin, that line has to name the network as well.

#### Their details, once, in fields

Bank details typed into a note get retyped into the bank every month. In Orla a contact keeps several payout rails at once: a bank rail picked by scheme, a crypto address per network, a PayPal email. An IBAN or a US routing number with two digits swapped is refused as it is typed, which is the mistake that otherwise surfaces once the money is somewhere else. The same card holds the contractor's tax id and the documents you keep on them.

- SEPA and IBAN
- UK sort code
- US ACH
- SWIFT, for everywhere else

### The US forms, in the IRS's own terms

A summary of what the IRS publishes, not tax advice: your accountant decides what applies to you.

#### Form W-9, from a US person

The IRS describes it as the way a payee gives their correct taxpayer identification number to the person who has to file an information return about them. That person is you. Ask for it before the first payment, not in January.

#### Form W-8BEN, from a foreign individual

A foreign person who is the beneficial owner of the payment gives it to the payer. A foreign company gives W-8BEN-E instead.

#### Form 1099-NEC, what you paid

It reports nonemployee compensation, and the current instructions set the line at $2,000 or more paid to one payee in the year. It is filed on or before January 31.

#### Outside the US, and where the forms live

Your country has its own version, and the shape is the same everywhere: identify the payee, keep the form, report the total. In Orla the W-9 or W-8BEN sits on the contractor's contact card under Documents, next to their rails and tax id. Orla does not prepare or file 1099s and withholds nothing.

### Six rails, with the fees written down

Read from each provider's own page on 26 September 2026. Fees change, so check the day you pay.

| Rail | What it costs | Arrival | Fits |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Domestic transfer (ACH, SEPA, Faster Payments) | Your bank's own tariff | Same day to a few days, by scheme | Contractors in your own country |
| International wire (SWIFT) | Bank of America: $45 to send in US dollars; in a foreign currency no wire fee, but exchange rate markups apply; an incoming wire may cost the receiver $15 at that bank | 1 to 5 business days | One-off larger payments abroad |
| Wise (Transfer service) | From 0.23% at the mid-market rate; Wise Business pays up to 1,000 contractors at once | Varies by currency | Many small payments in many currencies |
| Payoneer (From a business) | Up to 4.00 USD, EUR or GBP to a Payoneer account in the same country; 1% plus up to 4.00 USD to a bank in another country; the contractor pays 1.2% to 4% to withdraw to a local bank | Varies | Contractors who already live on Payoneer |
| Contractor platform (Deel) | $49 per contractor per month, with payments in 120+ currencies and tax form guidance | Varies | When you want a vendor to own classification and forms |
| Stablecoins (USDC, USDT) | The network fee: a USDT transfer on Ethereum showed $0.013 at 0.092 gwei on Etherscan (26 September 2026, 16:04 UTC); Solana's base fee is 5,000 lamports per signature; TRON burns TRX when stake and free bandwidth do not cover it | Minutes | Contractors who ask for it, or where the bank leg is slow |

Two rules of thumb. The cheapest rail is the one the contractor can use without an expensive step on their side: a transfer that costs you nothing and costs them 4% to withdraw is not cheap. And a platform priced per contractor per month is a fixed cost that does not care whether you paid them 200 or 20,000.

### One contractor, many, and the rule over both

Orla is the book the payment is written in, the rule it passes and the record it leaves; the money leaves from your own account.

#### One contractor

New payment asks how it is paid first, bank transfer or crypto, then the payee, the amount and the account it leaves. The form says what the account holds, whether a rule leaves the proposer room this month, and whether the payee has an address this kind of money can reach: a TRON wallet offers the contact's TRON address, a bank account their IBAN. A payee with no address for that network is stopped in the form, not after sending.

#### Many contractors

A payout batch takes up to 200 rows, typed or imported from a CSV with a template to download. The import shows what it matched before anything is created: which payees are existing contacts, which become new ones, and which lines are broken. A row that repeats a payment to the same contact for the same amount within three days is flagged before you submit, and submitting the same draft twice returns the same batch instead of paying twice.

#### The rule

Approval rules check the batch total, not each row, so a payout split into small rows still needs the signatures the whole amount would. Whoever proposes a payment cannot sign it. Address-book only forces a signature round for any destination that is not a trusted contact. The signer's notification names the contact, the amount and the rail the send will use, and Sign batch approves or rejects every row in one action.

#### The send, by rail

A signature approves a payment; the send is a separate last step, and each rail keeps its own.

- A plain bank account: Orla records the transfers, you make them in the bank, and Mark paid books each one with the bank's confirmation attached.
- Revolut Business or Airwallex: the run arrives in your bank as one draft that someone on your team sends there, and only what the bank paid is recorded as spent.
- Mercury: each payment is requested into your Mercury approval queue, and an admin approves it there. Mercury pays US dollars only.
- Slash or PayPal Payouts: a person presses Send via Slash or Pay via PayPal, and that press is the send.
- Your own wallet: the run sends every approved on-chain payment of one wallet, one transaction each, with the wallet unlocked once; unscreened addresses are screened first, and Stop lands between rows.

#### What stays behind

Every payment keeps who proposed it, who signed, when, and the reason for a refusal. An on-chain payment links its transaction id to the block explorer, with what the network actually charged. The Payments page exports exactly what its filters show as a CSV, and the month's archive for the accountant carries the payments with who proposed and who signed.

### Contractors you pay every month

#### Templates

A saved row list plus a schedule, monthly on a day or weekly. On the day Orla prepares the draft and tells its author it is ready. Sending is always a person's press, because who is on the list changes from month to month.

#### Cloning a run

A run already sent can be copied into a fresh draft, which is how a typo in a 100-row list gets fixed without retyping it.

#### A line that reads the payment against your own history

Under a payment that does not look like what this book usually does, Orla says which of three things it saw: the payee is being paid far more than usual, a payee never paid before is getting a large first amount by this book's own scale, or the same amount is going to the same payee twice within a week. It explains and never blocks.

#### Contractors who invoice you

Forward their invoice to the space's own mail address and it becomes a draft bill for a person to accept. Payment details are never taken from the email: what to pay comes from the draft, where to pay comes from the contact card. Tick several bills and Pay selected pays them as one run, through the same rule.

### What Orla does not do here

- Payroll: Orla is not payroll and not an employer of record: no classification, no withholding, no 1099 filing.
- Holding the money: Bank transfers leave from your bank, and on-chain payments are signed with keys encrypted in your browser. Orla holds money in two places only, both funded by you on purpose: the card balance and an agent's wallet.
- Bitcoin: A Bitcoin payment goes out one at a time from the payment itself; there is no Bitcoin run.
- Bank connections: Revolut Business opens its API only on its Grow, Scale and Enterprise plans, and Mercury holds US dollars only.
- Plans: A payout batch of up to 200 rows is on every plan, and the breakdown of who was paid and which bills a batch settled starts on Pro. One approval rule with a threshold, a signature count and the address-book switch is on every plan; several rules, bands, named approvers and monthly allowances are on Scale and Enterprise.
- Fees: On payouts and bills Orla takes nothing: each payment carries its own rail's cost. Orla's own fee sits in three places: a crypto swap and a card top-up, each named on the screen before you confirm, and what an AI agent's wallet spends on its own.

### Questions

**How do I pay a contractor for the first time?**

Settle three things before the money: whether they are a contractor by your country's test, what the agreement says about rate, currency and fees, and their payout details in fields, not in a note. Collect the tax form your country requires (in the US, a W-9 from a US person, a W-8BEN from a foreign individual). Then pay on the rail they can actually use, and keep who proposed, who signed and the reference the bank or the chain gave back.

**How do I pay contractors in another country?**

By bank wire, through Wise or Payoneer, through a contractor platform, or in USDC or USDT. Each has a different fee on your side and on theirs; the guide to international contractors puts the five side by side with the fees as they stood on 26 September 2026.

**Do I need a W-9 from every contractor?**

The IRS describes Form W-9 as the way a US payee gives their taxpayer identification number to whoever files an information return about them. Whether you have to file one for a given contractor depends on the amount, the year and who they are; the current instructions put the 1099-NEC line at $2,000 paid in the year. Ask your accountant which of your contractors that covers.

**Can I pay contractors in USDC?**

Yes, from your own wallet, on Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Polygon, Solana or TRON, one batch per wallet and asset. The network fee is cents; the risks are that a transfer cannot be recalled and that the wrong network loses the money. The USDC and USDT guide has the numbers and the way the payout reaches your accountant.

**What is the cheapest way to pay a contractor?**

For a contractor in your own country, your bank's domestic scheme. Across borders, compare the fee on both ends: Wise quotes transfers from 0.23% at the mid-market rate, a stablecoin transfer costs cents on the network but the contractor pays to cash out, and a SWIFT wire from a US bank costs $45 plus whatever the receiving bank takes. The cheapest rail is the one that leaves the contractor with the most.

### Read next

- How to pay international contractors, five ways: https://www.orla.finance/en/pay-contractors/international
- Paying contractors in USDC or USDT: https://www.orla.finance/en/pay-contractors/usdc
- How agencies pay influencers and talent: https://www.orla.finance/en/pay-contractors/influencers
- Supplier bill approvals for a small team: https://www.orla.finance/en/blog/supplier-bill-approvals-small-team
- Payments and batches in Orla: https://www.orla.finance/en/product/money
- What a wire, Wise and a stablecoin cost, for your amount: https://www.orla.finance/en/international-payment-cost-calculator
- Paying contractors on two rails from one book: https://www.orla.finance/en/blog/pay-contractors-bank-and-stablecoin-one-book
- Orla vs Rise, priced per contractor: https://www.orla.finance/en/vs-rise