How to Pay Contractors in Latin America from the US: Methods, Real Costs and Timelines
A guide for US companies paying contractors across LatAm: the three available methods, the cost broken down leg by leg, which local rails actually exist, and where the legal line with payroll sits.
The real problem is not the price, it is the number of moving parts
A US company with eight contractors across five countries does not have a fee problem. It has a moving parts problem: eight different transfers, each with its own bank-detail format, its own intermediary bank, its own timeline, its own exchange rate for the day, and its own odds of bouncing because one digit got copied wrong. When one bounces, you find out days later and without a useful explanation.
On top of that sits the part your bank statement never shows: who authorized each payment, what receipt the contractor got, and how any of it reconciles at month end.
This article covers the three routes a US company has today, with the cost of ours broken down leg by leg. You will not find numbers for the other two: we do not publish other companies' pricing without a source and a date, because it changes, and a stale table is worse than no table.
The three available methods
1. An international wire from your bank. The default path. It works, and its real cost is never just the fee your bank charges you: add the intermediary banks along the route, whatever the receiving bank deducts on credit, and the exchange-rate spread applied on conversion. The method for calculating that total is worked through in the true cost of sending money.
2. Contractor management and EOR platforms. These solve much more than the payment: contracts, classification, form collection, sometimes local hiring. If what you need is a country-by-country employment compliance apparatus, that category exists for a reason. Pricing is typically structured as a per-person monthly fee plus the conversion margin, which is why it is worth comparing against what you will actually use.
3. Digital dollars. What the rest of this article describes: you fund a company account in dollars, you pay each contractor's wallet, and that person decides whether to keep the balance in dollars or move it to their local bank. It does not include contracts, classification or forms — it is payment infrastructure, and that is worth being clear about before comparing prices against option 2.
Step 1: getting dollars into the company account
The business panel has two ways in, and in both the money is credited to your balance as USDC (a stablecoin equivalent 1:1 to the dollar):
- Card — card top-ups currently accept cards issued in the US, minimum $10 USD.
- Bank transfer — you generate USD deposit details and transfer via ACH or Wire from your bank. Those details are reusable: saved once, used for every top-up.
The inbound fee for receiving dollars is 0.75%, the same on all four plans. Card top-ups carry no fee from us, though the payment provider that processes them charges its own.
For a US company the ACH route is the interesting one: it is a stable deposit instruction you can schedule at your bank, not a fresh errand every month.
Step 2: paying the contractor
There are two distinct mechanics here, and picking the right one is half of this article.
An individual payment to their wallet
This is the natural flow for a contractor: in Send, you enter the amount, pick the asset (USDC or USDT) and the network — Base recommended, plus Ethereum, Polygon and Arbitrum — and paste the destination address (0x…) or pick a saved contact.
The confirmation screen shows your available balance and the network fee: ~$0.00, we cover the gas. The transfer usually completes in under 2 minutes and lands in Activity with an emailed receipt. After paying a new address, the app offers to save it as a contact for next month.
⚠️ The network matters more than the amount. A correct address on the wrong network can mean the funds are lost. Ask every contractor for the network alongside the address, save it as a contact the first time, and when in doubt use Base.
From the mobile app you can also pay another D-ONE CASH user's email address (P2P), with no addresses to handle.
The payroll module, and why it is not automatically for contractors
The panel has an Employees and Payroll module that pays several people in a single batch, with CSV import (email,amount) and biweekly or monthly scheduling on Growth and above. It is the right tool for a stable, recurring team, and it is covered in detail in stablecoin payroll.
Two warnings before you put contractors in there:
- Every person in the module goes through their own identity verification (KYC), and their wallet is created when that verification is approved. That makes sense for a standing team; for a vendor who invoices you once, it is friction you probably do not want.
- Running a payment from a module labelled "Payroll" does not make anyone an employee, or the reverse. Classification is a legal question in that person's country. More on that in the limits section.
The module's headcount cap follows the plan: Startup 10 · Growth 50 · Enterprise 100.
Step 3: what the contractor does with the money
This is the biggest difference from a bank wire: the payment ends in dollars, and the person being paid is the one who decides what happens next.
- Keep the balance in digital dollars — no cost. For someone in a country with a volatile currency, this is often the entire point.
- Withdraw to their local bank — an outbound fee between 1.50% and 2.10% depending on the destination country, with the currency conversion already included: only one fee is ever charged per operation. It is processed in 1–2 business days, and the exchange rate is applied when the order is processed, not when it is requested.
The details the app asks for change with the currency:
| Contractor's currency | What they need to withdraw |
|---|---|
| USD 🇺🇸 | Account holder, bank, routing number (ABA, 9 digits), account number |
| MXN 🇲🇽 | Account holder and CLABE (18 digits) |
| COP 🇨🇴 | Account holder, ID type and number, bank and account — or just their Bre-B Key (16 digits) |
| EUR 🇪🇺 | Account holder, IBAN and BIC/SWIFT |
| GBP / BRL 🇬🇧 🇧🇷 | Not available as withdrawals — see below |
📍 Each rail and currency is enabled progressively, country by country. If an option is not active in your contractor's account yet, the app shows it as "in progress." This is not something you can assume from your side: ask them to confirm it in their own account before the first large payment.
Brazil: the case worth saying out loud
Brazil shows up on the way in — you can top up from a Brazilian bank via Pix, as covered in what Pix is — but there is no withdrawal to a Brazilian bank account today. It has a defined fee and even so the currency does not appear in the withdrawal selector: the route does not exist. The same goes for sterling — GBP is offered and the app blocks it before the form. The four currencies you can actually withdraw in are USD, EUR, MXN and COP.
Translated into your operation: a contractor in Brazil gets paid in digital dollars and keeps them in dollars. If what you needed was depositing reais into their bank, this is not the route, and we would rather tell you here than have you find out on payday.
What it actually costs: a $2,000 payment to Mexico
Adding up the three legs, using the rates published in the fee table:
| Leg | Fee | On $2,000 |
|---|---|---|
| USD into your account (ACH) | 0.75% | $15.00 |
| Send to the contractor's wallet | 0.40% | ~$7.94 |
| Network fee (gas) | covered | ~$0.00 |
| Subtotal: the money is in their wallet, in dollars | ~$22.94 (≈1.15%) | |
| Withdrawal to their Mexican bank, conversion included | 1.90% | ~$37.56 |
| Total for the full trip into pesos | ~$60.50 (≈3.03%) |
Two readings of that table, and the second is the one that matters:
- If the contractor stays in dollars, the trip costs ~1.15% and the payment settles in under two minutes. Everything after that is paid for — and decided — by the person receiving it.
- Converting to local currency is the expensive leg, here and in every other method. Anyone comparing send fees alone is comparing half an operation.
An honest caveat: we are not always the cheapest option. For a single large payment to a country where your bank already has a good route, a traditional wire may come out ahead. The advantage here is a different one: predictable cost, an immediate receipt, and a contractor who receives dollars without depending on their bank being willing to hold them.
📌 Currency conversion is not charged separately: it lives inside the withdrawal fee, which is why that fee changes with the destination country. The four currencies you can withdraw in today are USD, EUR, MXN and COP. The app always shows the exact fee before you confirm — that is the number that governs.
Internal controls: who can pay, and who approves it
Paying vendors out of a shared account with no controls is how money goes missing. What is available, by plan:
| Control | What it does | From |
|---|---|---|
| Invite users | Panel access without a personal wallet | Startup |
| Separate roles | Admin · Finance · Read-only | Growth |
| Treasury alerts | Email alert if the balance drops below a threshold or a transaction exceeds an amount | Growth |
| Dual approval | Maker-checker on payroll batches: whoever prepares the batch sends it for approval and an Admin confirms | Enterprise |
| Audit log | Who did what: payments, payroll, approvals and team changes | Enterprise |
| Signed webhooks | Signed JSON POST with HMAC SHA-256 to your systems |
Enterprise |
The Finance role runs payments and withdrawals but does not manage the team or decide approvals; Read-only sees everything operational and executes nothing. Permissions are enforced on the server: tampering with the interface does not unlock an action outside your role.
One clarification worth having before you design your internal controls: dual approval covers payroll batches, which is where the button changes to "Send for approval." An individual send to a vendor's wallet does not go through that second signature. If you need four eyes on every vendor payment, today the route is role separation — Finance prepares, only an Admin can execute — plus the Enterprise audit log to review afterwards who did what.
And one limit worth checking before signing up for a plan: monthly volume is the combined cap on sends plus withdrawals in a calendar month — $15,000 on Professional, $200,000 on Startup, $400,000 on Growth and $1,000,000 on Enterprise. A payment that exceeds it will not execute.
The paperwork on the US side
Paying a vendor outside the US comes with its own file, and it is independent of the payment method you choose:
- Form W-8BEN is how you document that your vendor is not a US person. You collect it and keep it: it is not filed with the IRS. For vendors that are entities (a company rather than an individual), the form is W-8BEN-E.
- It expires: it generally remains valid through the last day of the third calendar year following the year it was signed, unless the vendor's circumstances change — in which case they must notify you within 30 days.
- Without the form, the default withholding rate on payments subject to withholding is 30%. As a general rule, services performed outside the US are treated as foreign-source income; which information return applies afterwards is a determination your accountant makes with the specific facts in hand.
The other side of this errand, from the contractor signing it, is in getting paid by US clients — useful material to send them when you request the form.
🧾 This is general information about forms, not tax advice. Your situation depends on your structure, where services are performed and each vendor's country: confirm it with your accountant.
What this does not solve
The section that decides whether this fits your company:
- Contractor and employee are not the same thing, and the payment method does not change the classification. It is determined by the law of the country where that person works, based on how the relationship actually operates: exclusivity, schedule, subordination, tools. Misclassifying someone carries retroactive consequences — contributions, severance, penalties — and it is not a risk an article can assess for you.
- We do not issue contracts, invoices, or collect forms for you. This is payment infrastructure: it executes the transfer, leaves a receipt and fires webhooks. If you need the full compliance apparatus, that is the EOR category.
- A stablecoin balance is not a bank deposit. Stablecoin balances are not covered by the FDIC, the SIPC, Fogafín or any deposit or investor insurance scheme. That is a difference your contractor should understand before the first payment, not after.
- We cannot guarantee a rail's availability in a specific country. It is enabled progressively, and the app reflects it as "in progress" while it is not yet active.
D-ONE CASH is a product of DIGITALROCKETS LLC. We are not a bank, a payroll provider, or legal, tax or employment advisors. What this article describes is what the tool does, verified against its product documentation.
Frequently asked questions
How do I pay a contractor in Latin America from a US company?
In three legs: you fund your company account in dollars (a US-issued card, with no fee from us but the payment provider's own, or an ACH/Wire deposit to reusable bank details, 0.75%), you pay the contractor's wallet from Send using their address or a saved contact (0.40%, gas covered, under 2 minutes), and that person decides whether to keep the balance in dollars or withdraw it to their local bank, where a rail exists (between 1.50% and 2.10% depending on the country, conversion already included, 1–2 business days).
What does it cost to pay $2,000 to a contractor in Mexico?
About $22.94 (1.15%) by the time the money is in their wallet in dollars. If they then withdraw to their Mexican bank, add that withdrawal — 1.90% with the conversion to pesos already included, about $37.56 — for roughly $60.50 in total, ≈3.03%. The app always shows the exact fee before you confirm.
Can I pay a contractor in Brazil and have them receive reais in their bank?
Not today. Brazil is available for topping up over Pix, but there is no withdrawal to a Brazilian bank account: it has a defined fee and even so the currency does not appear in the withdrawal selector. The four currencies you can actually withdraw in are USD, EUR, MXN and COP.
Can I use the payroll module to pay my contractors?
Technically it executes the payment the same way, but it is designed for a standing team: each person goes through their own identity verification and their wallet is created on approval. For a one-off vendor, sending directly to their wallet is simpler. And the important part: using the module does not reclassify anyone — the difference between an employee and a contractor is determined by the law of the country where that person works, not by which tab of the panel you used.
How do I stop a single person from being able to pay vendors?
With the separate roles on the Growth plan: Admin, Finance and Read-only, enforced on the server. Worth knowing that Enterprise dual approval applies to payroll batches, not to individual sends: for one-off vendor payments the control available today is that role separation, plus the Enterprise audit log to review afterwards who executed each payment.
Do I need to collect a W-8BEN from every foreign contractor?
It is the standard form documenting that your vendor is not a US person; you keep it and it is not filed with the IRS. It generally stays valid through the last day of the third calendar year after signing, the vendor must notify you within 30 days if their circumstances change, and without it the default withholding rate on payments subject to withholding is 30%. For entities the form is W-8BEN-E. Confirm your specific case with your accountant.