Startup Coalition urges UK govt to create reusable "BizPass" credential
British businesses collectively spend more than 11 million hours every year re-submitting the same identity information to banks, regulators, grant bodies and procurement platforms, according to a report published on Wednesday by Startup Coalition, the advocacy group for the UK's technology-led startups and scaleups. The figure, derived from polling of 501 senior business leaders conducted by Stack Data Strategy in July 2026, equates to roughly 6,200 full-time employees doing nothing but proving facts the state has already checked.
The report, titled BizPass: Verified Growth, proposes that the Government convert the ongoing Companies House director-verification exercise into a portable business credential it calls BizPass. Under the proposal, each of the UK's 5.6 million businesses would receive a single verified credential confirming two things: that the business is real and in good standing, and that the presenting individual is authorised to act for it. Banks, buyers and marketplaces could then check that credential in seconds rather than requesting the same documents afresh.
The policy mechanics
The report outlines a technically conservative path to implementation. For the approximately two million companies on the Companies House register, the existing company number would evolve into a verifiable credential, anchored to the identity verifications currently being collected under the Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act. Sole traders and partnerships would register a trading identity via GOV.UK One Login without a UTR or National Insurance number appearing in the credential. The Coalition also asks the Government to build an authoritative record of which verified individuals may act for which business and in what capacity, citing Singapore's Corppass and Australia's Relationship Authorisation Manager as working precedents.
Four of the report's recommendations require no new legislation. A single clause extending the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025's definition of digital verification services beyond individuals would cover the remaining gap. The Coalition argues the Government has, in effect, already begun: the deadline for six to seven million directors and persons with significant control to verify their identity with Companies House is 18 November 2026.
Charlie Mercer, Policy Director at Startup Coalition, said: "Britain's businesses are paying a tax they don't know they're paying. Every individual check is quick enough that nobody complains about it, but eleven million hours a year disappear into proving facts the state has already checked, and it's the fastest-growing firms who pay the most, because the burden rises exactly as a business grows."
Market context and competitive landscape
The BizPass concept sits within a broader international movement toward reusable business digital identity. The EU's eIDAS 2.0 regulation, which requires member states to offer digital identity wallets to citizens and businesses by 2026, creates a structural benchmark against which UK policy will be judged post-Brexit. The CFIT Digital Company ID blueprint and the City of London Corporation's Digital Verification Orchestrator have already mapped portions of this space domestically; the Startup Coalition frames BizPass as the mechanism that extends coverage to the millions of unincorporated businesses those initiatives do not reach.
On the commercial side, a government-issued BizPass would have significant implications for the know-your-business (KYB) software market, where vendors such as Creditsafe, Dun and Bradstreet and a growing tier of API-first compliance fintechs currently monetise exactly the friction the credential would remove. Those players may face reduced demand for manual document collection, but could pivot to value-added enrichment services if the open-banking-style enrichment model the Coalition proposes gains traction.
Business appetite appears to exist: the polling found 57% of senior leaders support a Business Digital Identity against 17% opposed, and 82% said verifying once and reusing that verification would be valuable. Security and access-control conditions ranked above convenience benefits in stated preferences, a signal that any implementation will need robust trust-mark and data-governance features to achieve adoption.