Health and critical industry workers to gain fraud-resistant mobile certification system on DLT under a new $430,000 Innovate UK grant to Billon Group and The Gekko Group

The accessible, real-time platform for COVID-19 training and testing verification via distributed ledger technology coming by close of Q1 2021

(London/Warsaw, November 25, 2020) Enterprise DLT creator Billon Group and digital services provider The Gekko Group won a £326,000 grant ($430,000) from Innovate UK’s Sustainable Innovation Fund to develop a digital certification platform accelerating the post-pandemic recovery. This grant follows and builds upon Billon’s successful creation of a prototype certificate under a previous £50,000 Innovate UK grant.

The prototype Right to Work platform, which uses Billon Group’s distributed ledger technology (DLT) blockchain technology, allows businesses and organisations to certify and validate the required onboarding documents, such as medical training, test results or immunity certificates, and store them on the ledger.

The new platform takes it further, delivering three elements:

• Multi-tenant platform powered by Billon’s DLT serving as a back-end for credentials storage and sharing;
• Front-end credential generator for document providers;
• White-labelled mobile wallet for individuals to store and present their certificates using QR codes.

Billon’s Chief Growth Officer David Putts comments: 

“We imagine a world where wide-scale training and testing programs allow employees and the population to feel safe in hospitals, airports, or nursing homes - places where staff cannot socially distance themselves easily. By creating the platform as a shared utility, any solution provider or company can offer their own certification program to benefit from the privacy that comes from encrypted, private data secured by our blockchain platform. And by partnering with The Gekko Group, we know we’ll get the most user-friendly interface tailored to the needs of workers, consumers and employers.”

For public health officials: The platform certifies who has complied with essential standards for returning to work, such as completion of specialised training or a medically established COVID-19 immunity. This makes it possible for medical staff to move between locations and show their training or health status, linked to identity, which saves time and money by eliminating paperwork and background checks.

For employees and consumers: The platform lets them use their phone or other digital device to instantly provide proof of workplace safety training, negative test results, or vaccination.

For employers: The platform provides on-demand verification at entry points, efficiently securing workplaces. Employees just show it on their digital device to access restricted work zones. The immutable certificates also can validate onboarding documents required for compliance processes.

What’s different about this approach to documenting COVID-19 safety? Because it is blockchain-based, it provides decentralised and immutable data storage – the ultimate level of reliable, tamper-proof security. Once a certificate is linked to an ID, it is immutably stored, so it cannot be modified by any participating party.

Billon is partnering with The Gekko Group for design and development of the user interface and mobile application. The Gekko Group Founder Michael Eriksson adds: 

“The Gekko Group was created on the belief that a better future is shaped by digital solutions that do good. This product directly speaks to that purpose. We address the crucial need for privacy while digitalising personal information so we can share it in a way that the receiver knows it can be trusted. Partnering with Billon Group was a natural decision. They have a deep understanding of how DLT transforms the way we build digital services -- with absolute integrity and trust between people and organisations.”

The Right to Work platform stands out in contrast to other existing solutions as the distributed ledger technology underpinning it, developed and provided by Billon, enables highly secure, fraud-resistant document sharing and verification for documents, whilst also protecting the privacy and integrity of the user. The certificates are retrievable at all times while valid and can be revoked or programmed to expire. Encryption and dispersion of information on blockchain allows personal data to be hidden from everyone except the certificate issuer and the recipient.

Billon Group had previously received a £50,000 grant in the Fast Start Competition by Innovate UK to build a distributed ledger platform to store COVID-19 related certificates to support workers’ safe return to the workplace. This pilot scope has been refined to progress with a fully functioning prototype for sharing, storage and verification of a wide range of workplace training and medical test documents. Together, the companies have received £326,000 in this new grant to deliver a solution to the market by the end of Q1 2021, which brings the value of the project to over $400,000.

The Sustainable Development Fund was launched by Innovate UK in June 2020 to help all sectors of the UK economy to rebuild after the effects of COVID-19. The £75 million fund supports innovators that address key challenges of the pandemic and create new opportunities as a result.

About Billon

Billon created a DLT protocol and system specifically for tokenizing and transacting national currency and processing sensitive data in compliance with regulations, thus unleashing the transformational capabilities of blockchain technologies in the regulated world.  Billon’s underlying protocol was designed for high throughput levels and low cost of maintenance in a range of environments. The system supports clients developing their own enterprise-grade applications in areas of Accounts & Transactions, Trusted Documents, and Identity & Data Sharing.

Billon Group Ltd. was founded in the UK in 2015, following several years of R&D in Poland. Its unique DLT protocol has been supported by many R&D grants, including the EU Horizon 2020 program. Billon is licensed to issue electronic money by regulators in the UK and Poland.  Billon’s growing client list includes leading companies such as FIS, Raiffeisen Bank International and BIK (the Polish credit reporting agency). Billon has offices in London and Warsaw.

For more information, visit www.billongroup.com. Follow Billon Group on LinkedIn & Twitter & Facebook.

Media contacts:

For Europe: Maciej Józefowicz / maciej.jozefowicz@billongroup.com / tel. 0048 734 443 023

For North America: Nancy Broe / nbroe@fulltiltconsulting.com / tel. +1 678 230 9146