The financial regulators of the member states of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) held a Joint Payment Area Working Group meeting to discuss fintech-focused key trends and initiatives in order to develop and promote the services across the region.

The regulators of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan held the meeting, which was also attended by several FinTech Association representatives who made presentations about the organisation's purpose and objectives, its core focus areas and market participants’ joint projects with the Bank of Russia.

The participants expressed their willingness to continue cooperation on distributed ledger technology (DLT) as part of the cross-national financial messaging and settlement system including the Masterchain platform. In October 2016, the Central Bank of Russia developed a technical prototype – Masterchain– for financial messaging, based on the DLT.

“The parties noted their multilateral dialogue and the exploration of joint projects was well-timed, relevant and must continue across several fields including the development of payment area, financial messaging with the use of distributed ledgers, remote identification, speedy payment systems and open interface solutions,” the official release stated.

Furthermore, the EEU financial regulators also agreed to continue joining forces in the areas of national speedy payment system interaction, as well as in projects involving remote identification across EEU.