A licensing, permits and registration platform is on course to be ‘Scotland’s most successful GovTech scale-up’ after hitting £1million in revenue in its first year.
ePass, which has been adopted by the Scottish Government and is live with all 32 local authorities across the country, greatly enhances, simplifies and standardises the process of applying for licences and permits online.
The platform, which can be used by government regulators for numerous use cases, came to the fore as one of the winners of the national CivTech innovation accelerator.
Its approach to regulating the sale of vapes and tobacco – in the form of a national register – provides oversight of retailers and was rolled out across the country within six months last year.
Founded in 2024 by CEO James Buchan and CTO Chris Renga, ePass was one of the first private organisations to be onboarded onto the Scottish Government’s cloud platform and will be the first live service on the Scottish Government’s ‘App for Scotland’ later this year.
Now live across the Scottish Government as a core digital component serving all 32 local authorities and more than 15,000 businesses to date, ePass expects the number to rise to around 80,000 by next year.
James Buchan, co-founder and CEO of ePass, said: “Scotland has had a licensing problem for decades. Licensing and registration are essential public services, but too often the underlying processes have been fragmented, paper-heavy and difficult to manage consistently.
“ePass was created to reduce that friction, and we are now a core component of Scotland’s national digital infrastructure. We are now helping public bodies move towards a more reusable, consistent and scalable model for licensing, permitting and registration.”
And the company says it’s poised to support government as it starts to use AI as part of public service delivery.
Buchan added: “Responsible AI in public services will depend on the quality of the underlying data, workflows and governance. That is where platforms such as ePass can play an important enabling role: creating structured, auditable service data from processes that have historically been fragmented or paper-based.”
The UK public sector IT spend is valued at around £26 billion and ePass, according to the State of Digital Government Review, and CEO Buchan sees considerable opportunities for growth outside Scotland.
“What is really exciting for ePass is the scope for expansion, not only into other areas of the public sector, but beyond Scotland into UK-wide and international markets,” Buchan added.
ePass has made a number of senior hires in 2026, with Bjorn Gisbertz joining the company as Director of Public Sector Strategy, and Aaron Drummond joining as Growth Lead. Gisbertz brings experience from elected office, public administration and public-sector digital transformation across Northern Europe, while Drummond will lead growth strategy in the UK and overseas.