So predicts the head of the central bank’s Financial Technology, Projects and Process Management Department Vadim Kalukhov, who is involved in the creation of Russian blockchain consortium.

“In the next 10 years about a half of the banks in existence today will close their offices. Half of the banks’ employees will lose their jobs,” he said at the Forum for Strategic Initiatives during a discussion of the industrial automation in various sectors of the economy.

“...10 years ago we wondered if there could be an office without customers, five years ago we carried out wide-ranging discussion whether the bank can have no branches, now the question is whether a bank can be without employees,” he told the TASS agency.

Earlier in April, the same opinion was voiced by Vice President of Sberbank Andrey Sharov: he predicted bank extinction due to the P2P and blockchain technologies. “I'm afraid, in 10 years, I will have no place to work,” he said.

Meanwhile, the Bank of Russia takes confident steps towards implementation of blockchain technologies. As CoinFox reported earlier, the regulator has created a prototypical blockchain system to be tested by the principal market players. For this purpose, a consortium of Russian banks and financial organisation is being built.

“It is a non-public blockchain where all users are identified. We created several nods open to all participants, who tested [money] transfers. We can send messages in any formats: ISO, UFEBS and others,” previously said Kalukhov in an interview to Bankir.ru. According to him, the central bank uses the open source blockchain technology Hyperledger.

Ludmila Brus