Russian banks and financial services firms have come together to create a national blockchain consortium.
The coalition, unveiled during a conference in St. Petersburg, includes QIWI Group, Accenture, BINBANK, MDM Bank, Bank Otkritie, and Tinkoff Bank.
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The members of consortium will jointly develop and test proof-of-concept prototypes and will seek to standardize the technology, making it open to the market.
Distributed ledger technology is expected to help in completing financial transactions with greater speed, security, cost-efficiency and transparency compared to the existing system.
QIWI Group CEO Sergey Solonin said: "Creation of consortium in Russia is our response to the rapidly growing interest in innovative technologies that can lead the economy, business and daily life of a person to a completely new level of interaction and confidence."
"I’m convinced that the Consortium, which brought together the Russia’s largest financial company, is able to become an effective platform for multilateral cooperation in exploration, launching innovations and their implementations in financial services," Solonin added.
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By GlobalDataIn February 2016, Russian central bank established a blockchain working group that studied, distributed ledger technology.
Bank of Russia governor Elvira Nabiullina said: "The banking business is undergoing a rapid new technology-caused transformation as we see the emergence of new areas in the banking business. Therefore, undoubtedly, both the regulator and the bank community need to be abreast of all recent trends and best business practices."
