By High Growth Scotland editorial
Edinburgh-based GovTech venture ePass is aiming to become one of Scotland’s standout scaleups after reporting £1 million in revenue in its first year of trading and securing a flagship national deployment across the public sector. A Founded in 2024 by chief executive James Buchan and chief technology officer Chris Renga, the company emerged from a successful bid in one of the largest CivTech challenges to date, centred on delivering a new tobacco and vapes retailers register. A
The ePass platform focuses on licensing, registration and permitting, positioning itself as a reusable digital component that public bodies can adopt across multiple service lines. A Following its CivTech win, the startup’s tobacco and vapes register was built and deployed in just six months, underlining the team’s ability to move at pace within a complex regulatory environment. A Buchan and Renga have since set their sights on turning that first use case into a broader GovTech footprint, with ePass already rolling out across Scotland’s public sector. A C
ePass was among the first private organisations to be onboarded to the Scottish Government’s cloud platform, a key part of the national digital infrastructure strategy. A Later this year, it is expected to become the first live service on the Scottish Government’s ‘App for Scotland’, giving citizens and businesses mobile access to the platform’s licensing and registration services. A For Scotland’s digital ecosystem, that early-mover position places ePass at the centre of how core public services are being modernised and accessed. C
The platform is now live across the Scottish Government as a core digital component, currently serving all 32 local authorities and more than 15,000 businesses. A The company expects that figure to rise to around 80,000 businesses by next year as additional sectors and use cases come on stream. A Taken together, those numbers suggest that ePass is already operating at meaningful national scale, with a clear runway for expansion into further regulatory domains. C
Buchan argues that ePass is tackling a long-standing structural issue in Scottish public services. A “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,” he said. Q “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.” Q For high-growth observers, that focus on reuse and consistency aligns closely with broader efforts to make Scotland’s public-service stack more modular and data-driven. C
The timing of ePass’s progress overlaps with the Scottish Government’s newly announced ‘Scotland’s AI Strategy 2026–2031’. A Commenting on the strategy, Buchan said: “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.” Q From a GovTech perspective, this positions ePass not just as a front-end service but as an enabling layer for future AI applications in compliance, enforcement and policy insight. C
While the company’s current footprint is concentrated in Scotland, ePass is already looking beyond its home market. A The UK public sector is valued at around £50 billion, and Buchan sees considerable room to adapt the platform for other jurisdictions and regulatory regimes. A “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,” he added. Q For investors tracking scalable public-sector platforms, that blend of domestic traction and clear export narrative will be a key part of the growth story. C
To support its ambitions, ePass has strengthened its senior team in 2026 with a series of strategic hires. A Bjorn Gisbertz has joined as director of public sector strategy, bringing experience from elected office, public administration and public-sector digital transformation across Northern Europe. A The company has also appointed Aaron Drummond as growth lead, with responsibility for shaping ePass’s expansion in the UK and overseas markets. A These appointments indicate that the company is building the commercial and policy depth needed to work with governments beyond Scotland. C
ePass is also investing in its broader organisation, with a number of engineering, delivery and operational hires currently underway. A With £1 million in revenue in its first twelve months and a live national deployment already in place, the company is actively engaging with venture capital and investor communities and is likely to embark on its first external fundraising round later this year. A For Scotland’s GovTech scene, that prospective raise will be an important signal of how far investor appetite has moved towards platforms that sit at the heart of national digital infrastructure rather than only at the edge of citizen services. C
If ePass can convert its early CivTech-backed traction into a repeatable model for licensing and permitting across multiple jurisdictions, the company will have a credible shot at becoming one of Scotland’s most significant GovTech scaleups over the next cycle. C As public bodies adapt to AI-era requirements for structured, auditable data and more resilient workflows, platforms built on live production use cases like the tobacco and vapes register are likely to attract increasing attention from both policymakers and growth capital. C
