Billon completes live blockchain payouts in the UK

Billon Group , the first regulated eMoney distributed ledger solutions provider, has successfully completed the first end-to-end client payout for participants in a market research programme. Conduct Research uses Billon to transfer funds to 100 participants, who can pay bills, transfer to their own bank account, or withdraw funds at their convenience at over 40,000 Paypoint locations, said a release.

FCA sandbox participant Billon works as a digital asset minting process within the confines of a bank. It associates every blockchain address with an International Bank Account Number (IBAN) number. The bank moves this money into eMoney safeguarding account and uses signatures to create a first genesis block of a blockchain that represents given value.

This service is the first of its kind to be carried out in the UK using distributed ledger technology, it aims to ensure micro-payments that were previously slow and unprofitable to process can be executed quickly and profitably free from traditional intermediaries. Billon aims to scale up activity for UK SMEs now the concept of fund collection for online payments has been proven as commercially viable, secure and cost effective.

David Putts, chairman and MD, Expansion & Partnerships said: "Billon eliminates the cost and friction of pre-paid cards, cheques, and cash – now companies can send instant pay outs to users who register in seconds. With an audit trail secured by distributed ledger, much of the back-office costs of monitoring and reconciling pay outs are eliminated. Billon fulfils the government's published goals of reducing transaction fees and operating costs for SMEs by incorporating Distributed Ledger Technology."

Melo Wallace-Potter of Conduct Research said: "As a small firm, we can't afford the back-office costs of pre-paid cards, and certainly, no one wants to give us their bank account details. Our participants were happy to simply download a free app and get paid instantly. Users maintain their own details and passwords, but we get an electronic audit trail of who is paid."

In interview, Andrzej Horoszczak, CEO and founder, Billon, said: "We understood that we cannot create our own money supply, that if we do what Bitcoin or Ethereum does and we attempt to control money supply this will never be accepted by the regulators.

"In our system there are no miners and no coins; think of it as a mint rather than a miner. We create value only when someone gives us or the bank an asset. So you have to come with dollars, pounds and all we do is encode those pounds on DLT.

"Often blockchain solutions end up in some innovation department. We are way beyond this point. Our technology is mature and we want to be in deployment and are looking for partners that want to go into business."