Sberbank piloted the very first payment transaction of the Russian banking industry on a chain of blocks.
Sberbank, Russia's largest bank by its assets, carried out a real-time money transfer on a blockchain built by IBM based on Hyperledger Fabric – a blockchain software. The transaction involved a transfer of money of an unknown amount between a payer and a recipient in two separate banks, facilitated by Sberbank's computer systems with a web application allowing the bank's customer to track the transfer.
As reported by CCN in July, the open source Linux-based Hyperlinkger blockchain consortium officially launched its first production-ready blockchain software in Hyperledger Fabric 1.0.
"The blockchain solution created by Sberbank allowed us to perform the first pilot payment transaction using IBM Blockchain technology in the history of the Russian banking sector," said Stella Kudachkina, the director of Sberbank.
Sberbank also listed a number of partners involved in the pilot payment transaction, alluding to a future blockchain payments for retail banking customers. They include MegaFon, the second largest mobile operator in Russia; MegaLabs, a Moscow-based IT solutions provider; Alfa-Bank, a large Russian private bank and; giant of IBM technology.
Notably, Sberbank and Alfa-Bank hosted the blockchain nodes with the ultimate goal of "serving as the main scenario for the development of a new settlement function" between the two banks.
The executive of Sberbank added:
The advantage of using this technology during transactions is the speed of transfer: after the sending of the money, the transaction is recorded on the account of the recipient almost instantly, in real time, unlike the traditional system is used to make transfers.
The announcement of Sberbank comes just a few months after the bank's joining the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance (EEA), a consortium of companies, startups and governments working to pull Ethereum open chain technology party for business solutions.
Earlier this year, Bank Chief Executive Herman Gref – including a member of the Commission – claimed that Russia would see commercial applications of blockchain technology by 2019.
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