Sberbank has organised the Russian banking industry’s first-ever pilot blockchain payment transaction. The transaction used the IBM Blockchain Platform on the basis of HyperLedger Fabric. Sberbank’s partners and participants in the pilot were MegaFon, MegaLabs, Alfa-Bank, and IBM.

      Sberbank CIB organised the process of transferring money from the payer to the receiver using blockchain technology. Sberbank’s IT infrastructure was used 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. The technological process which was created will serve as the primary scenario for developing a new settlement function.

      Sberbank is Russia’s largest bank and a leading global financial institution. Sberbank holds almost one third of aggregate Russian banking sector assets, it is the key lender to the national economy and the biggest deposit taker in Russia. The Central Bank of the Russian Federation is the founder and principal shareholder of Sberbank owning 50% of the Bank's authorized capital plus one voting share, with the remaining 50% held by domestic and international investors. Sberbank has more than 135 million individual customers and more than 1 million corporate clients in 22 countries. Sberbank has the largest distribution network in Russia with almost 17,000 branches, and its international operations include UK, US, CIS, Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey and other countries.