Solving today's challenges with digital innovation – Billon in the World Summit Award Global Top 40

Billon has been recognised as one of 40 winners of the international World Summit Award. The company joins “The Guardian”, the Bundestag, and the producers of “Angry Birds” as one of the creators of digital solutions that positively impact the global society.

Polish fintech company Billon is the winner of World Summit Award in Business & Commerce as the creator of one of world’s 40 best digital projects that help meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Billon is the only Polish company to be selected from over 400 nominations representing 180 countries. The Warsaw-based fintech successfully showed the grand jury that its breakthrough distributed ledger technology for instant online payments can facilitate achieving such goals as ending poverty, providing decent work and economic growth worldwide, and empowering women with economic independence.

Andrzej Horoszczak, Billon founder & CEO, states: “I see Billon as a revolutionary tool solving the problem of financial exclusion globally. There are 2,5 billion unbanked individuals in the world whose problems cannot be solved within the existing financial system, as its outdated architecture is a problem itself. We go for a new approach, storing real money as data on users’ devices and exchanging 

Billon is the first company in the world to enable transactions in everyday currencies like pound or euro using distributed ledger and blockchain. Money is stored as encrypted files on mobile devices or in the cloud. Users are not required to have a bank account or a debit/credit card, as all transfers are made directly between them in peer-to-peer mode. The result is an extremely fast and safe payment method that can be used by any person with a smartphone, regardless of their wealth, age or social status.

Billon’s instant payments can be used for e-commerce, content monetization, micropayments, incentives and loyalty programs, remittance and donations for content creators. The company’s policy is to offer those solutions to individual users for free. Corporate solutions will generate enough revenue to avoid charging the unbanked and financially excluded, thus realising the vision of sustainable and socially responsible growth. Billon’s technology can be then used by starting entrepreneurs and artists to develop their business and profit from their craft and passion.

40 winners from 23 countries, selected from over 400 nominations from 180 countries

World Summit Awards present a global spectre of change-making projects ranging from a miniature AED machine with diagnostic app to organ 3D printing, from a job-platform focusing on female tech talent to a tiny programmable computer for schoolchildren. The WSA winners were selected by a jury of international ICT experts. Some of the previous winners are: “Angry Birds”, Hootsuite, “The Guardian”, “Sherlock” mobile app and the Bundestag.

“I am very happy for Billon’s success and I would like to extend my congratulations to all the people in the company. Billon is the third Polish business to become a World Summit Award Winner. I hope this achievement will motivate Billon team to work even better  and the interest of media and investors will result in the global commercial success” – states Jakub Lebuda, CEO of Clipatize and the Polish jury member of World Summit Award.

WSA promotes and recognizes the uniqueness of digital innovation with impact on society

Billon and other winners will receive the World Summit Award in front of UN representatives, ICT ministries and the private sector at the World Summit Global Congress in Vienna (March 20-22, 2018). The agenda of the WSA Congress will be a compilation of interaction and inspiration, assembling workshops, business blind-dates and inspiring keynotes, bringing together the global and multi-stakeholder network of WSA.

“To drive meaningful and relevant digital innovation, you have to serve local needs and compare with global excellence. With the WSA we recognize innovation of tomorrow already today. This year’s winners are an excellent selection of this momentum, matching local solutions to local needs, with global relevance. WSA highlights the diversity and excellence in digital content with impact on society”, WSA Chairman Peter A. Bruck states.

About the WSA
The World Summit Award is a global initiative within the framework of the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). WSA is the only ICT event worldwide that reaches the mobile community in over 180 countries.

Visit us on www.worldsummitawards.org, facebook.com/WorldSummitAwards and twitter.com/WSAoffice, #WSA17

About Billon
Billon disrupts technological fundaments behind money and the way it is stored and moved between people and organizations. The company has created a revolutionary instant payments system tapping on advanced cryptography and distributed ledger technology.

We are the 1st FinTech company to solve problems of cumbersome and expensive trillion dollar alternative payments market, levering the proprietary distributed ledger technology to eliminate the need for vouchers, pre-paid cards, and other semi-cash payment methods. Billon builds pioneering white label products and customised solutions for companies that wish to reinvent corporate incentive payments and build digital engagement. The company also offers ready to use merchant services and content monetization tools.

Learn more at www.billongroup.com