Thor, a USA-based project on the NEO blockchain, which aims to provide payments, healthcare access, and retirement planning for contract laborers, has announced a partnership with Dwolla. Dwolla is a USA-based payment services provider. Dwolla’s licensing and connections to the U.S. banking system will enable fiat payments in Thor’s products, including Odin, Thor’s newly introduced contractor management portal.
Dwolla
The core payment services of Thor require a money transmitter license (MTL) in each U.S. state that it wishes to operate in. Thor still plans to secure its own money transmitter licenses across the United States on a state-by-state basis. This process is expected to take at least 6 to 12 months.
However, Thor reports that “Our partnership with Dwolla essentially allows us to leverage an existing MTL to accomplish the required transactional elements of our platform”. Thor expects its Thor and Odin products will be operational before it receives its own MTLs, because it can now send and receive money through the U.S. banking network with Dwolla’s help.
Dwolla sales director Allen Jingst commented that “The gig economy is proving to be a major component of the U.S. economy, but it’s still built on out-of-date payment models. We are thrilled to partner with Thor to modernize the gig economy and ultimately make it more efficient than ever.”
Odin
Odin, a “blockchain-ready” contractor payments portal which was spun off from the Thor project during development, officially launched on October 1st, 2018. Thor report that Odin’s development has yielded three main functions for employers: payments, onboarding, and integration.
Odin’s payments system is designed to manage payments, including instant payments and incentive payments, to a workforce of “1099” contract laborers, that is, workers receiving IRS Form 1099-MISC. “Onboarding” refers to fulfilling the necessary requirements to hire an employee, a task that Odin seeks to streamline. Finally, “integration” refers to Thor’s efforts to make Odin work in harmony with the employer’s other data systems, such as corporate communication within chat apps, or employee data that is organized in a third-party spreadsheet application.
Yoshi
Finally, Thor has announced that mobile car-care startup Yoshi will be the first customer to use its Odin management portal. Yoshi CEO Nick Alexander joined Thor’s advisory board in September and has helped guide its product development. Alexander remarked, “There are surprisingly few tools designed for managing payments to contractors”. Alexander claimed to save “time and money” with the Odin portal and added that “It’s about time someone put a product like this on the market.”
Thor’s press release and updates from October 1st and 2nd, 2018, can be read in full at the following links:
https://medium.com/thorco/thor-launches-odin-announces-yoshi-as-first-customer-6ffd3be1a3be
https://medium.com/thorco/thor-september-2018-report-c030181ba1b2
More information on the Thor project can be found in the links below.
About The Author: Colin Closser
Colin Closser, M.D., was a speaker at the first NEO DevCon in San Francisco. A devoted contrarian, he has managed the improbable: a peaceful and healthy life, despite holding a medical degree. He aspires towards the wisdom of Michael Lewis and Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
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