Russia’s CBDC pilot is expected to will gather a larger pool of merchants and participants following the onboarding of over a dozen more banks in the initiative, including Russia's largest bank.
The Bank of Russia's digital ruble experiments will not launch before 2025 as the central bank continues to test a range of use cases for the CBDC with commercial banks.
Russian banking giant Sberbank’s new offering will commence before the end of June and will cater to the needs of both private and institutional investors.
First Deputy Chairman of the Board of Sberbank Alexander Vedyakhin described distributed ledger technology as the future of the banking industry, and Russian banks have the chance to be pioneers in using the technology.
Sber executed a billion rubles (around $16 million) digital financial asset issuance with its subsidiary SberFactoring as the platform's first transaction on July 9.
Sber—formerly Sberbank—is set to begin issuing and trading digital financial assets on its in-house digital assets platform, with first transaction to take place around mid-July.
The state-owned Sber recently rebranded from Sberbank to become a leader in technology and financial technologies, rather than solely in banking.
Russia’s Sberbank has filed an application with the country’s banking regulator to launch its own stablecoin.
The state owned bank is reportedly nearing rollout of the technology, which will provide access to digital currencies and digital assets via blockchain.
The “Sbercoin” will be equal to a fixed amount of Russian Ruble and that it will be used for digital financial asset settlements.
Sberbank will no longer pursue its plans following the negative stance adopted towards cryptocurrencies by the Bank of Russia.
Russia’s initial coin offering (ICO) pilot has ended and its administrator, the Bank of Russia, has announced that it was a complete success.
