Alfa-Bank, one of the largest private commercial banks in Russia, is exploring blockchain technology in its services for freelancers. According to a Dec. 1 announcement, Alfa-Bank will use blockchain-based applications to automate services for freelancers and self-employed workers. Based on Waves Enterprise’s blockchain platform, Alfa-Bank’s new service covers the entire process of registration and remuneration for self-employed individuals, including payments settlement, income registration and tax payments. Denis Dodon, director of Alfa-Bank’s research and development center, told Cointelegraph that the new blockchain-based service enables freelancers to get direct remuneration via any bank: “DLT and embedded smart contracts with an end-to-end integration …
The commercial, state-run Bank of China, not to be confused with the People’s Bank of China, announced its plans to invest further in fintech innovation, according to local news outlet The Paper August 9. Citing comments at a press conference on the banking industry, The Paper reports that the Bank of China’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), Liu Qiuwan, has revealed plans to increase the company’s investments in research and development technologies such as blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT), and fintech. Investment in the technologies will reportedly be more than 1 percent of the bank’s operating annual income, which in …
When banks finally come to improve their technology experience, they go no deeper than changing the front end. They’ll make a button blue instead of green or create rounded edges on buttons instead of square ones. They think in terms of their interfaces, not the back end. If a bank were to truly innovate its technology, it’d dig deeper into the back end and transform its legacy technical infrastructure, which has been the same for decades. Few today even know how to work on those old programming languages of yesteryear, such as COBOL, so they’re stuck with upgrades that turn …
Visa has launched a payment system for business-to-business (B2B) transactions partially based on blockchain technology. The United States payment behemoth says its platform, called Visa B2B Connect, offers seamless cross-border payment processing for institutional clients without going through the complex web of third-party intermediaries. In doing so, Visa becomes the latest entrant into the blockchain-based payment processing arena. This move brings the company into direct competition with cryptocurrency startups like Ripple and mainstream players, such as Barclays and BNY Mellon with their Utility Settlement Coin (USC) project under the aegis of the Fnality Consortium. Visa B2B Connect — three years …
Moscow Credit Bank has issued a blockchain-based bank guarantee denominated in Chinese currency, claiming the product is the first in the country. The bank guarantee exceeds 100 million Chinese yuan — or nearly $144,600 USD at time of publication. According to a statement, the transaction was performed through the Masterchain blockchain platform, andthe Russian national blockchain network created to transfer digital assets between its participants. As one of the advantages of performing the transaction on-chain, the financial institution mentioned that "the beneficiary does not need to wait for the paper version and make a separate request to the bank to …