Let Andela Contract & Pay Your Global Talent (So You Don’t Have To)

Andela is launching Andela Pay Agent of Record (AOR), a solution that contracts and pays any talent across 100+ countries on behalf of startups and enterprises.

TL;DR

The Global Contracting Maze: global talent contracting is a maze of administrative headaches, currency fluctuations, and compliance that keep companies from scaling their international teams effectively. ‍
‍Meet Andela Pay AOR: an agent of record model shoulders the burden of global contracting by handling payments, compliance, and currency risk so companies can build their dream team anywhere. ‍
How companies like GitHub contract their global talent: intuitive time tracking, compliance screening, and stable USD payments across borders help clients work with any contractor in just a few clicks.

Hiring global talent—especially independent contractors—can be complicated. But it doesn’t have to be. With Andela Pay AOR, Andela manages the complexities so companies can stay focused on growth.

Andela Pay AOR is a comprehensive contracting and payment solution that empowers companies to seamlessly engage independent contractors around the world. Acting as an agent of record, Andela contracts and pays any global talent on a company’s behalf, helping them reduce risk and scale faster.

‍Navigating the Global Contracting Maze

As companies become more intentional about talent strategy and building distributed teams, navigating global contracting can present significant challenges. Here’s what many companies are realizing:

A diversified talent strategy is critical for long-term growth. Companies need the ability to contract talent and deploy payments efficiently and compliantly, regardless of geography.
Without a standardized way to contract and pay global talent, companies risk exposure to misclassification, regulatory issues, and financial penalties.
Managing currency fluctuations adds additional complexity to maintaining consistent, reliable payments.

When managing global teams, companies have a few options. They can set up local entities in each country, but that approach is often slow and costly. To move faster, companies hiring full-time employees often use an Employer of Record (EOR) to handle payroll, benefits, and compliance. Companies working with independent contractors can rely on an Agent of Record (AOR) like Andela Pay AOR to manage contracts, payments, and regulatory risk—making it easier to scale a global workforce.

We don’t have entities all around the world, and Andela has been able to provide us with amazing resources in country that help us bring our products to market much faster.” - Mark Schaefer, GitHub

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‍Introducing Andela Pay AOR

Andela Pay AOR is a contracting and payment solution that helps companies compliantly engage independent contractors anywhere in the world.

Originally built into Andela’s end-to-end hiring suite for technical talent, Andela Pay AOR is now also available as a standalone solution—giving companies the ability to manage contractors they source independently, outside of Andela’s talent marketplace.

Companies source the talent, and Andela acts as the intermediary—handling contracting, onboarding, payments, and compliance under an Agent of Record (AOR) model. By shifting compliance responsibilities to Andela, companies minimize legal risk, reduce administrative overhead, and scale their global contractor workforce faster.

Key Benefits:

Skip local entity setup: Andela Pay AOR enables companies to compliantly engage contractors across 100+ countries—no need to open local legal entities.
Reduce compliance risk: We assume legal and classification risk, helping protect companies from costly fines and penalties.
Protect against currency fluctuations: All payments are made in stable, predictable USD, minimizing volatility and financial risk.
Eliminate administrative burden: Andela handles contracting, onboarding, and payments—freeing companies from administrative overhead.
Speed up procurement: Andela Pay AOR is already covered under clients’ Master Services Agreements, so companies can activate instantly without new paperwork.

How It Works

Companies already partnering with Andela can activate Andela Pay AOR without going through new procurement cycles. Because the offering is covered under Andela’s Master Services Agreement (MSA), all they need to do is independently source their talent—Andela handles the rest:

Sign up and add your first talent: Complete a self-guided onboarding process and provide talent details to set up your AOR engagement.

Choose their rate and time-tracking method: Set talent’s compensation level and determine if they need to track time on an hourly, daily, or monthly basis.

Sign SOW and confirm: Sign the SOW in-platform or have it sent to a signatory. Review timesheets and pay:

Review timesheets and pay: Talent tracks time and submits timesheets through the platform, while clients can easily review and approve submissions. Andela invoices the client monthly for talent payments in USD, and talent receives payments by the 10th of each month, also in USD.

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See How Others Leverage Andela Pay AOR

Organizations across industries already use Andela Pay AOR to solve complex global talent challenges. Here are a few examples:

Paying talent after a merger or acquisition:
A Fortune 500 global audio technology company realized post-acquisition that they had no system in place to compliantly pay contractors in certain countries. With Andela Pay AOR, they seamlessly onboarded and paid acquired talent without missing a beat.
‍Accelerating international hiring without establishing local entities:
A top automotive marketplace for used car buying and selling found the right contractor for a critical project but lacked a legal entity in the contractor’s country. Using Andela Pay AOR, they hired and paid the contractor compliantly without the cost and delay of setting up a local entity. ‍
Scaling execution with a contractor budget as full-time headcount shrinks:
The world’s largest open-source developer platform faced limited full-time hiring budgets but growing demand for technical execution. They used Andela Pay AOR to compliantly manage a larger contractor workforce, ensuring rapid growth without expanding permanent headcount.

Building the Future of Global Talent Engagement

Andela is already helping clients by connecting brilliant technologists with life-changing opportunities. Now, we're working to connect top companies to top talent everywhere.

At Andela, we're enabling organizations to focus on what matters most: building exceptional teams and delivering outstanding results. To stay ahead in a quickly evolving hiring market is to diversify your talent strategy and tap into global markets without the headache or paperwork.

Looking ahead, we’re building on this foundation to create even more ways for companies to engage top talent across borders—seamlessly, compliantly, and at scale. As we expand Andela Pay AOR and develop innovative solutions, we’re focused on making global talent engagement faster, safer, and more flexible—helping companies not just adapt to change butlead it.

Ready to transform your global talent operations? Set up a demo today to learn how Andela Pay AOR can simplify your global contractor payments.