Blockchain Startup Billon Nets €2 Million From EU Research Fund

UK blockchain payment startup Billon Group has received €2 million in new funding from Horizon 2020, a notable European Union research program.
According to a statement from the startup, the grant seeks to formally recognize its capacity in developing corporate payment solutions based on distributed ledger technologies (DLT). The startup said the funds would be used to its suite of develop e-commerce and content monetization solutions.

Further, while Horizon 2020 provides €80 billion in funds from 2014 to 2020 for a wide range of innovation companies, this is perhaps the first funding offer from the program to a blockchain-related startup. Specifically Billon Group's grant came from a subsidiary SME Instrument program, which has offered €3 billion during the same period for high-potential SMEs.

Tadeusz Kuropatwinski, Billion's managing director of digital payments business, added:

"We believe content monetization and eCommerce payments will be one of the main drivers behind the global demand for micropayments, especially in emerging markets. Billon expects to launch merchant services for eCommerce and content monetization this autumn in Poland and in 2018 in the UK."

The funding also continues Billion's history of working with government programs.

As reported in November last year, Billon was selected to the first phase of a Sandbox program launched by the U.K.'s regulation watchdog Financial Conduct Authority, designed specifically for testing DLT products in a supervised environment.