Blockchain fintech Billon receives $2.1 million grant from EU to develop document management system
Polish-British fintech Billon has been awarded an almost €2 million (~$2.1 million) grant from the European Commission’s SME Instrument program to develop a blockchain document management system, the company announced in a press release.
The company is working on developing a proprietary distributed ledger technology solution called B4TDM (Blockchain for Trusted Document Management). The solution is built to store, sign, and share electronic documents. Besides digitizing documentation, B4TDM will provide encryption and customise access control rights. According to the press release, DLT will allow companies to cut management costs by almost 50 percent.
"Today’s document management industry has struggled with fulfilling regulatory and customer requirements related to protecting document identity content, and to provide customers with control over data they choose to share or delete," said Wojtek Kostrzewa, CEO of Billon Group. "With the funding from Horizon 2020, Billon will fulfill MIFiD2 and GDPR requirements with innovation that puts a customer in control of their own data and documents."
In order to ascertain GDPR compliance, for instance, businesses will be able to delete access to data when a client wants a company to “forget” them. Due to its regulatory compliance, the solution has been adopted by the Polish Credit Office, and first banks will begin adoption by the end of the second quarter of 2019.
The company is one of 64 projects to get funding in Phase 2 of the SME Instrument, and it is the only blockchain project to be recognised in this phase. Previously, blockchain software company SettleMint and Know-Your-Customer service AUTHENTEQ have also been awarded grants.
"We were qualified to receive the funding some time ago, but we signed the grant agreement only now, so now we are certain we will get the money and can communicate that. This is the timing that was recommended by the EU," the company told The Block.
