QIWI joins Central Bank of Russias ‘Fintech Association amid blockchain push

Russian payment service provider firm QIWI Plc announced that it has joined the ‘Fintech Association’.

The association was founded by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation recently, along with the largest Russian financial market participants including Sberbank, VTB, Alfa Bank, Gazprombank, Otkritie FC and the National System of Payment Cards (NSPK). The ‘Fintech Association’ will focus on research and implementation of promising technology in the fields of distributed ledgers, open interfaces, remote identification, among others.

QIWI has been spearheading the blockchain industry in Russia. QIWI, which offers next generation payment services in Russia and the CIS, joined the U.S.-based financial innovation firm R3’s blockchain consortium last year. By joining the consortium, the company is collaborating on the design and potential application of distributed and shared-ledger inspired technologies to global financial markets.

“QIWI is working closely with national regulators and domestic financial institutions in order to familiarize the market with these technologies. At the moment, we are at the stage of international integration. The capabilities of distributed and shared-ledger inspired technologies are very exciting for us and can help us upgrade and improve the technologies underlying our core business” Sergey Solonin, QIWI's chief executive officer, said at that time.

Russia has been exploring the potentials of blockchain in various sectors. Blockchain technologies are attracting increased interest from Russian financial institutions and IT companies, among other industries. The government authorities in the country have given increased interest towards the potential use cases of the nascent technology in anti-corruption, AML, risk management and others.

In the recent past, leading companies in the Russian financial sector have joined and formed a consortium with the objective to explore and implement blockchain technology and its derivatives. The consortium that is hosted by Central Bank of Russia saw QIWI, BINBANK, MDM Bank, Sberbank, Otkritie Bank, Tinkoff Bank and Accenture signing a mutual memorandum, expressing their intention to join.

Also, the Central Bank of Russia, with the market participants developed a technical prototype called ‘Masterchain’ for financial messaging, based on the distributed ledger technology (DLT). QIWI, along with other major financial institutions were involved in developing the platform.

Last week, Russia’s Association of Financial Innovation (AFI) prepared a draft outlining the roadmap for improving the regulation of National Payment System. The main provisions of the roadmap included the implementation of blockchain technology for identification of clients.