Billon has raised $16.5M in total. We talk with Wojtek Kostrzewa, its CEO.
PetaCrunch: How would you describe Billon in a single tweet?
Wojtek Kostrzewa: Billon unleashed transformational capabilities of blockchain technologies with a high-performance enterprise system unifying national currency transactions, documents and identity management on a DLT built for scale.
PC: How did it all start and why?
WK: Billon’s founder, Andrzej Horoszczak, began formulating the central ideas behind Billon whilst working as a programmer on Wall Street before the Great Recession. Having first graduated from Caldwell College and the University of Pennsylvania, Warsaw-born Andrzej developed skills as a cryptologist and financier enabling him to identify ways in which the global financial system could operate in a fashion that was both faster, more user-oriented and a lot more secure. Andrzej realised that cryptology could be used to overcome limitations by completely altering the underlying cost structure of banking. In search of a solution that could integrate with existing systems and regulations, in 2010 he brought together a team to leverage the core concepts of blockchain technologies with a remit to look beyond its limitations. That was the start of Billon. After years of work on a R&D project Billon Group was incorporated in December 2015 to commercialise the technology. Since January 2019 Andrzej is focused on technology as Billon’s CTO and CVO while I took over as the CEO.
PC: What have you achieved so far?
WK: Over the past years Billon moved from being a research project to an established company providing tangible business benefits for clients and partners. We first designed our system to make micropayments profitable for banks, but during the process of solving regulatory challenges an inspiration struck and our vision expanded to lever ability to put documents on-chain and to manage identity and data access rights. Ultimately we built a lightweight protocol processing payments and data simultaneously in a fully regulated environment, outperforming cryptocurrency adaptations.
Remarkably, Billon is the first DLT company that received an EU license to operate as a regulated e-money institution, issuing not stablecoins, but natively encrypted national currencies on blockchain. We ran successful pilots implementing e-money payouts and microtransactions in FMCG, insurance and e-Sports area and with the e-money license we are ready for the commercial rollout in the whole EU. Beyond Europe Billon has partnered with global companies, like FIS in the US and Mitsui Knowledge Industry in Japan, to implement its technology in accounts and payments solutions for enterprises.
In the document management area Billon joined forces with BIK, the Polish credit office, to develop the solution for the Polish banking sector, digitising client-facing communication (sending out documents like T&C, pricings, etc.) by moving it from paper to blockchain. We are expanding this capability to store on-chain other sensitive documents, like university diplomas, insurance policies, and corporate documentation.
Billon employs 80+ people in offices in London and Warsaw, with more than half of the staff working in R&D. We are proud to have some of the most talented people in the field of blockchain technology, cryptography and IT security aboard. Our DLT protocol has been supported by numerous grants, including the EU Horizon 2020 program and recognized with many awards, with the Global FinTech Hackcelerator at the Singapore FinTech Festival among them.
PC: How will you use your recent and next funding round?
WK: We will use the funding to ensure the delivery of ongoing projects. When completed, they will help win new partnerships with a track record of execution and enable Billon to roll out across the EU.
The next goal is the opening of our DLT platform. With the new funding we can release existing components and APIs to independent developers, consulting companies or system integrators and create tools to build solutions on top of our DLT. An open platform with a marketplace of solutions can possibly serve even hundreds of millions of end users exchanging all kinds of value globally.
PC: What do you plan to achieve in the next 2-3 years?
WK: Our near term vision is to scale with existing partners and clients. We will grow first within EU and then on other markets, when we fill find a strong local partner. In the longer perspective we hope for a global launch with winning more partners in India, China and the US. By forging global strategic relations with world’s leading companies Billon’s ultimate goal is to become a market leading enterprise DLT company.
