- Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, has made the country’s first money transfer via blockchain.
- The transfer was powered by an IBM platform using Hyperledger, an open source collaborative effort created to advance cross-industry blockchain technologies.
It is a global collaboration, hosted by The Linux Foundation, including leaders in finance, banking, Internet of Things, supply chains, manufacturing and Technology.
Sberbank’s managing director Stella Kudachkina said that the high speed with which blockchain-powered transfers could be made would revolutionise banking.
Sberbank president Herman Gref predicted in February 2017 that the technology would be powering commercial money transfers in Russia within two years. "The Prime Minister of the Russian Federation signed an order to create an ad-hoc working group headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov on the possibility of using blockchain technology for transfers," Gref said.
Gref called the move a huge step forward as the development of blockchain technology for money transfers is now sanctioned at the highest political level. “It will affect all sectors across the board,” he added.
Sberbank, along with one of the country’s biggest lenders, VTB Group, have developed a distributed ledger called Masterchain which will make the money transfer technology commercial.
The move comes at the time when the Moscow-based S7 Airlines has completed the first online payment for an airline ticket via a blockchain platform.
Buying an airline ticket in Russia can take up to two weeks. Using the blockchain platform, processing time is reduced to seconds, according to a spokesperson for the airline which serves provincial Russia and the CIS Member States.
“Implementation of the blockchain platform Ethereum opens the door for optimization of business processes for both the carrier and its partners. Thus, the airlines don't delay payment to an agent which receives the money shortly after the ticket is processed,” the spokesperson said.
