The Bank of Russia discussed tokenisation of cashless payments with banks

The Russian central bank held a working meeting at the end of last year on implementing tokenised cashless payments. This was stated by the Bank of Russia to «Известиям».

Representatives of the Association of Banks of Russia, VTB and PSB attended the meeting. The regulator plans to continue the discussion after surveying market participants on this topic, a survey being conducted by the Association of Banks of Russia.

According to its vice-president Alexei Voilukov, the concept of tokenised settlements had already been proposed by the central bank as an alternative to the digital ruble, but the central bank took a sceptical view of the idea.

“If tokens are attached to current cashless payments, transactions will become named and personalised. There is no need to create a new architecture — it is enough to fine-tune the existing systems. It is assumed that such a tool would not act as a counterweight to the digital ruble — it would be another option,” said Voilukov.

He also noted that tokenisation of cashless payments would make it easy to track transactions involving budgetary funds.

PSB said that the market’s priority remains the rollout of the digital ruble.

Earlier it was reported that a prototype of the platform for the central bank’s new digital asset is ready, and banks have begun testing operations with the digital ruble or are actively preparing for its launch.

Follow ForkLog’s Bitcoin news on our Telegram — cryptocurrency news, prices and analytics.