Alfa-Bank, one of the largest private commercial banks in Russia, announced today a partnership with X5 Retail Group to launch a blockchain-powered liquidity management service for its corporate customers.
The customized service named Distributed Treasury and Cash Management (DTCM) would enable the bank’s institutional clients to effectively manage their financial transactions, including cross-border settlement, bank deposit, and obtaining loans inside the holding, the firm noted in a press release.
DTCM is a service developed on the Waves Enterprise blockchain platform, combining a series of breakthrough solutions, including open banking, open API, and smart contracts.
The director of Alfa-Bank’s Center for Innovations Research and Development, Denis Dodon stated that every instance in business is unique, with customers evolving, seeking the easy way out in their day-to-day activities, including optimizing in-house processes.
He went further to distinguish the newly developed service from other competing products, saying:
“The key difference between DTCM and other offers available on the market is that we give our client not just a channel to send orders to the bank but a way to shape up business logic of the product and actually ‘create a bank’ for the client’s convenience.”
Alfa-Bank described the service as a bridge to the Bank-as-a-Service (BaaS) model for corporations, noting that it works contrary to their traditional banking model, where customers are required to forward their orders to the bank.
The BaaS model, as explained in the release, would help create an avenue for the bank’s corporate customers to utilize its product and service outside the bank’s environment, to suit their distinct needs.
On his part, X5 Retail Group CFO Svetlana Demyashkevich while commenting on the development, said:
“The experience gained jointly with Alfa-Bank and Waves Enterprise constitutes a new benchmark in our interaction with banks: we get a unified treasury application, improve data management, and cut costs and operational risks.”
Demyashkevich added that X5 plans to utilize blockchain tech in other services, to boost their performance, such as in making payments, encashment, and optimized collaboration with insurance companies.
Meanwhile, in another development regarding banks adopting blockchain technology, Coinfomania reported earlier today that Santander Bank issued the first end-to-end bond using the Ethereum blockchain.
