Contractor Unity frequently asked questions

Paying foreign contractors can be complex, especially when you’re managing a range of countries, currencies and payment schedules. Contractor Unity from Safeguard Global makes it simple.

Contractor Unity is the contractor payments platform from Safeguard Global. Using a single, streamlined platform, you can pay all your contractors around the world, in their local currencies.

When companies manually pay global contractors, they spend a lot of time managing various local currencies and payment schedules. They also verify banking information repeatedly and chase down time sheets from their workers. These challenges are time-consuming and can lead to inaccurate payments.

Contractor Unity removes these obstacles so you can develop stronger relationships with your contractor workforce. Through a single platform, you can approve invoices from all your global contractors, then pay them—on time—in their local currencies.

For fixed-term contractors, you can choose a fixed weekly, semi-monthly or monthly payment schedule.

Contractors who work using a time tracking system can be paid hourly, daily and weekly, and will only be paid for the time they work on a project. These workers upload their time according to their specified schedules and payments are processed based on those inputs.

You can get started for $10 a month per contractor, with no additional fees for frequent payments.

There are no additional fees to manage currency exchanges, but rates vary depending on the exchange.

Contractors can select their preferred currency when receiving payments. Contractor Unity supports over 170 different currencies. The most common currencies our clients use to pay their invoices are USD, EUR or GBP, but we can facilitate any other currency when requested.

To be clear, international independent contractors aren’t 1099 workers. But because “1099” is the IRS code for U.S.-based contract workers, U.S. companies may associate “1099” with all contractors, regardless of where the contractors are based.

However, the IRS doesn’t require a company to withhold taxes or report any income from an international contractor if the contractor is not a U.S. citizen and the services provided are outside the U.S. Filing a 1099 is required if:

Every country has different requirements, but in most cases, contractors will be responsible for filling out their own tax forms. Learn more about the requirements for hiring and paying foreign workers.

Contractor bank account information is validated during the onboarding process. We always conduct a test payment during the initial onboarding to ensure your contractors can receive payment. No matter what currency you pay, we ensure contractors can accept those payments in their local currencies.

Contractors can be onboarded to the platform in less than a day. Payment verification can take five days for new clients and two days for contractors to verify banking account information. Taking this small amount of time upfront will ensure greater accuracy and timeliness during your working relationship.

If a contractor ever needs to update their details, it can be completed by either the client or the contractor.

Paying foreign contractors might only be one piece of your global employment strategy. As your business needs evolve, we offer solutions to help you scale your international workforce and operations.

In addition to paying all your global contractors in a single platform, we can help you quickly convert them to employees to mitigate potential misclassification risks. Or maybe their contributions are critical, and you want to bring them on permanently. We can help you hire your international contractors as employees through GEO, our employer of record solution, even if you don’t have a local entity. Whatever the case may be, our local HR experts can help you make the compliant transition from contractor to employee with fast onboarding and administrative support.