Earlier this month major companies from the Russian financial industry announced the creation of a consortium for joint exploration and project implementation in the field of blockchain and related technologies. Accenture, BINBANK, MDM Bank, Bank Otkritie, QIWI Group and Tinkoff Bank have expressed their intention to join the Consortium.
The consortium presents itself as “Russia’s first collaboration platform across innovative and distributed technologies.” Its activities spread over technological, regulatory, practical and communicative purposes.
In particular, the members will be engaged in joint development and prototype testing and technology standardization of technology, aiming to make the technology accessible to all market players. An “open communicative platform for market participants and the regulator” will be launched, while efforts will be made to “raise the level of public knowledge and confidence in blockchain-based financial services.”
The consortium will also aim to “harmonize technologically the Russian blockchain movement with the global one.”
“Over the past two years, the attention to blockchain and its derivatives has intensified. Blockchain can effectively solve the long-standing technological problems in the financial sector and change all kinds of relationships between market players,” said Sergey Solonin, CEO of QIWI Group.
Such innovative technologies “can lead the economy, business and daily life of a person to a completely new level of interaction and confidence,” he believes.
Blockchain has also attracted the attention of Russia’s central bank, which made several steps recently to track and get involved in the developments of financial technologies. In February, the bank created a working group to implement fintech innovation in cooperation with market players, with a focus on blockchain technologies.
