Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia, plans to ameliorate its services using blockchain. Petrodvorets Watch Factory, est. 1721, aims to use the distributed ledger to protect its products from counterfeiting.

Herman Gref, the head of Sberbank, believes customers should be saved the trouble of ever visiting a bank in person, according to RIА Nоvоsti. He insists this can be achieved in the very near future.

According to Gref, the bank’s new blockchain platform will be completed by the end of 2018 while some of its elements are already in use. It would adopt such advanced technologies as image and voice recognition but the crown of the platform would be the blockchain.

“We are interested in all technologies in any way connected with finance. And of these, the most groundbreaking is, of course, the blockchain technology,” says Gref. Its main advantage, according to Sberbank CEO, is the possibility “to perform a great number of tasks without anyone’s assistance” and the fact that no operation can be retracted.

Sberbank will also discuss the distributed ledger technology at a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and the Central Bank, according to the news portal Bankir.ru. The meeting was called by Sberbank to discuss cybersecurity issues due to the growing number of hacker attacks against the banking system. Sberbank is said to propose an anti-cybercrime interbank network solution. It has not been specified, though, how the blockchain is going to be used for this purpose.

The Petrodvorets Watch Factory in St. Petersburg has also revealed its plans to use the distributed ledger technology, says Rusbase. It has concluded a partnership with Blockchain Engine company with the aim to protect its iconic model of watch Raketa from counterfeiting. With the price comparable to Swiss luxury brands, Raketa is one of the most counterfeited Russian products.

The company plans to use the blockchain to store relevant information about each produced item: the date of production, name of the assembler, refurbishments and even information about the owner if they do not mind sharing it.

Alexey Tereshchenko