Warsaw, Poland & London, United Kingdom, 26th June 2018 – Billon, the technology company civilising blockchain, is the first Polish company to feature in the annual Fintech50, a prestigious list of the most innovative European companies from the world of finance and technology. Founded in 2012 and launched in 2013, the annual FinTech50 is the first list to feature FinTech companies for their innovation rather than list them in order of revenue. The 2018 Fintech50 includes Billon as its first ever Polish entrant, with over half of this years’ list based in the City of London.
The 2018 FinTech50 was selected from a long-list of over 1,800 FinTechs across Europe; the largest ever number of FinTechs considered for the list. The selection panel included innovation and investment heads from tier-one banks HSBC, Deutsche Bank and Barclays, Insurers Axa and Aviva, VC investors, global FinTechs such as Stripe. Billon appears in the list alongside fellow innovators such as Monzo Bank, Revolut, Azimo, Ethereum and Onfido.
With a technology built to solve operational problems resulting from outdated, centralised IT systems, Billon’s light and distributed architecture allows users to save money, documents, and identities directly onto its blockchain granting full access to the end user or confirmed entities. Developed in Warsaw, the technology enables Billon to co-create solutions with its customers on their existing infrastructures, simplifying and reducing the cost of much of back-office processes. Billon recently received global attention for a partnership with Biuro Informacji Kredytowej (BIK), the biggest CEE credit score provider owned by most innovative Polish banks, to move communication with up to 25 million individuals and businesses to blockchain.
“We are delighted to have been included in this years’ FinTech50, and receive recognition for our blockchain innovations from an international panel of FinTech experts,” explained Andrzej Horoszczak, CEO & Founder, Billon. “We have been working for many years to bring our blockchain technology to the masses, most recently with our world’s first solution for secure document management for the banking sector in Poland together with BIK. We’re grateful to all of our customers, partners, and employees for their continued support, and look forward to further growth and innovation as we pass the midway point in 2018.”
Billon’s founders and shareholders include some of the most well-known and respected executives in Poland’s financial industry, including: Andrzej Horoszczak (founder of Billon and blockchain expert with 10 years of experience in Wall Street), Andrzej Klesyk (former president of PZU), David Putts (founder of Inteligo) and Wojciech Kostrzewa (former president and CEO of BRE Bank and Commerzbank). Billon’s unique blockchain protocol continues to receive R&D support, including 2 million euros from the prestigious Horizon 2020 European Commission Program, for the revolutionary potential of its technology for direct payments.
About Billon:
Billon has created a versatile distributed ledger technology that enables a new era of monetary and document transactions. The unique architecture relies on national currencies and stores money, documents and identity directly on-chain, fully protected by the power of blockchain. Billon works with clients through modular building blocks that already enabled solutions such as trusted document management, content monetisation and corporate motivation. Founded in 2012, Billon is an FCA registered eMoney institution with a global team of more than 100 professionals across its offices in the UK and Poland.