GreenBank Capital Inc (CSE:GBC) has revealed that Substantia Group, which is wholly owned by its 19%-owned portfolio company Staminier Limited, has signed a condition-dependent letter of intent to purchase a significant shareholding in Identify (ID), a cloud-based, blockchain-backed security and identification platform.
The company noted that Substantia is a UK-based business consultancy offering clients a wide range of outsourced advisory services, and is led by Terry Pullen, concurrently also CEO of GreenBank.
GreenBank said the investment will take the form of a convertible loan facility to be drawn down across several tranches. Completion of the transaction is dependent upon several factors, some of which include ID fully incorporating as a UK company, commercial viability testing of the concept, and assurance of market novelty and exclusivity, it added.
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ID seeks to simplify, streamline, and radically improve the management, storage and sharing of security and KYC (know your client) identification documents across all sectors, including finance and banking, healthcare and medical records, travel documentation, insurance, housing and utilities, and legal, among others.
It expects the application to drastically improve ease of access and storage of required documentation in the compliance process, helping businesses and individuals comply with identification, certification, laws, and regulatory requirements.
"I believe that Identify has the potential to truly revolutionise the way businesses, governments and organisations interact with identification,” Identify founder Samsher Singh said in a statement. “Using blockchain infrastructure, Identify will be able to support our clients by providing a complete end-to-end solution to fit any business. The team at The Substantia Group have a great collaborative approach, providing a clear route to market, a network to leverage, and the funding to propel Identify to become a global market leader in this space."
GreenBank said Substantia’s investment is intended to propel the ID platform from the pre-Alpha stage into the next stage of its development, ultimately leading to the full end-to-end product build. Identify management expects its platform to reach the Beta stage later in 2022, at which point it would become ready for initial market testing. It is presently expected that a release-to-market stage product will be available by March 2023.
Converting identification and certification documents into Non-Fungible Tokens, GreenBank said ID's platform will then store these digital assets in a cloud-based folder through blockchain technology, creating smart contracts which in turn will generate a ‘trust score' of both the individual/individuals and the documents themselves. ID's management believes that the security and verification ramifications of the finished product are unparalleled at the present time, it said.
"Substantia have been incredibly impressed with the proposition and product design that Identify has showcased. Blockchain for digital identity and credentials is rapidly becoming one of the most critical step-changes in security and compliance, and Identify's platform has the potential to become a market leader,” Substantia CEO Terry Pullen added. “Harnessing the enormous potential of blockchain and digital tokenisation, Samsher and his team really have created a truly revolutionary product concept, and Substantia looks forward to working with him in the future to make this a reality."
GreenBank Capital is a next-generation merchant banking business that has a flexible low-cost overhead structure designed to maximize profitability.
Its management is based in Toronto, Dallas and London and is used to working across borders remotely. The company's model of remote working, dynamic space and flexible contracts - rather than large fixed costs - establishes GreenBank as a global merchant bank for the future, both during and after the coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic.
Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com