Cash Flow and Payment Issues

When your are self employed you can’t think like an employee. You need to assume that everyone will pay late, and by late, think 2-3 MONTHS.

Most companies in our sector will try and pay on time** but if something goes wrong, THEN it can get messy, fast, and take weeks to resolve.

Payment Issues

Your first aim is to establish where the problem lies. Ask them, “Tell me what steps you have taken to pay me, what information you are using to pay me – i.e. what bank account / crypto wallet, and why you think I haven’t yet been paid”.

• It might be obvious that they simply have wrong bank info for you and an update will solve it.
• A waffle answer means it’s a THEM problem.
• Them blaming a third party, like their own bank, means it’s a THEM problem.
• But they might say the payment has been returned/rejected by your bank, and have all your right info. And that is a YOU problem

If it’s a THEM problem, keep a log and be prepared to write a step by step what happened when so that they can see that they owe you and should pay you.

At this point you move to PAPER and send to their address for legal correspondence. This is slower than official channels, but does tend to cut through log jams. Companies like this take people seriously when they write to the legal address, on paper, because that person is both bloody annoyed and being damned serious*.

Going nuclear – GDPR, court action etc should only be considered if you are giving up on the platform entirely, because they can decide to cancel your account. Freedom to contract, and to NOT contract.

If it’s your bank that is the problem, you are in danger of your bank cancelling your account. Because their next step is to decide that they do not want your business. This is especially likely if you are using a Personal Account, not a Business Account. Bank T&C do not allow businesses to be run on Personal Accounts. To stop this happening, route all payments via a collections account that is fine with our industry. I use a Bitsafe account to receive my money, then pull it over into my bank account. You should too.

*IF you are having trouble getting paid, I’m happy to help on the presentational issues.

** Be glad you’re not a farmer or in construction, where 90 days late is normal and if you want paying on time, they’ll want a discount!