Sberbank, one of the largest banks in Russia, has announced that it has conducted the country’s banking industry’s first-ever pilot blockchain payment transaction.

The participants involved in the pilot include MegaFon, MegaLabs, Alfa-Bank, and IBM. The transaction used the IBM Blockchain Platform on the basis of HyperLedger Fabric. Sberbank joined the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger blockchain project in 2016.

The blockchain-based payment transaction was organized by Sberbank CIB, the bank’s corporate and investment banking business. It used the bank’s IT infrastructure to set up a service for establishing the uniform transaction procedure, the certification centre of the network, and a web app for the client with a personal account section. In addition, Sberbank and Alfa-Bank hosted the nodes of the blockchain network.

In its official release, Sberbank said that the technological process which was created will serve as the primary scenario for developing a new settlement function.

“The blockchain solution created by Sberbank has allowed us to make the first pilot payment transaction - using IBM Blockchain technology - in the history of the Russian banking industry,” commented Sberbank CIB Managing Director Stella Kudachkina. “Above all, the advantage of using this technology when performing settlements is the high speed at which transfers are made: after the money is sent the transaction is recorded on the receiver’s account almost instantly, in real time, unlike the traditional system that is used to make transfers.”

Earlier in June, Sberbank announced its cooperation with Severstal to carry out international letter of credit transactions using blockchain technology.