Sberbank Rossii PAO (MCX:SBER) CIB in alliance with the National Settlement Depository (NSD) and MTS has conducted the first commercial bond transaction based on BlockChain technology.
Sberbank CIB has facilitated the issue of the MTS corporate bonds for RUB 750 billion. The bonds have 6 months maturity. The bank used NSD’s Hyperledger Fabric 1.1 based blockchain platform to complete the transaction.
The company issues unsecured fixed income securities and places them on OTC through a private subscription. The blockchain technology is used for implementing the delivery and payment settlement model to facilitate the transfer of bonds as well as money simultaneously.
All the three parties got access to the blockchain platform to complete the transaction. It ensures confidentiality and transparency in conducting the transaction and complies with the Russian Law. It allows the exchange of the documents online by each party and also tracks the status of each transaction in real-time.
Head and Senior Vice President of Sberbank CIB, Mr. Igor Bulantsev said the issue of MTS bonds helped the bank to validate the efficiency, reliability and secure nature of the blockchain platform. It also helped to validate the complex transactions that involve securities. It also has a potential to develop the digital economy of Russia.
Chairman (Executive Board) of NSD, Eddie Astanin said NSD is one of the organizations in Russia to adopt the blockchain technology for the first time. The company started working on a prototype model to perform the transactions involving bonds in the first quarter of 2017. The company’s deal with MTS and Sberbank is the first of its kind and proven that blockchain based platform is more secure to perform transactions involving securities. It is a mass technology and facilitates confidentiality and speed to perform transactions.
The main aim of the company is to develop an infrastructure to record the digital assets. The Russian government has implemented blockchain based technology in December 2017. According to the recent announcement, Sberbank is partnering with the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia to implement blockchain based document transfer/ storage.