PAYMENTS: CENTRAL & EASTERN EUROPE The new bloc: Many countries in Central and Eastern Europe are ready for decentralised systems
Totally taken with tokenisation Raiffeisen Bank International was uniquely positioned in Central and Eastern Europe to develop a private stablecoin that operates alongside the Euro. Head of Strategic Partnerships and Ecosystems, Christian Wolf, says the bank’s tokenisation platform shows what collaboration and transparency can achieve A payments system that’s superfast, super-secure and superefficient, with the ability to include transactional data, sounds like Utopia. Blockchain tokenisation can offer just that and it is fast taking hold among the most innovative players in global financial circles. The latest to join that still somewhat exclusive club is Austria’s biggest bank, Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI), which is also a leading force in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Its RBI Coin, revealed in May, is an alternative national currency, fixed against the Euro, which has been developed in partnership with UK/Polish fintech Billon. Stefan Andjelic, RBI’s Blockchain Hub lead, says the bank was inspired to make the move by two things. Firstly, US bank JPMorgan’s development of the JPM Coin, which has been offered to institutional clients for blockchain payments since early 2019. And, secondly, a forecast by the World Economic Forum that 10 per cent of global gross domestic product is
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expected to be digitised through tokenisation by 2027. Andjelic says blockchain tokenisation carries with it three distinct advantages over legacy payment systems – namely, near-real time settlement, a single source of truth that is permanent and verifiable, and the ability to constantly evolve through disruptive technologies. To that end, RBI, which has 16.7 million customers, has big ambitions for its stablecoin, which uses Billon’s Digitised Distributed Cash system, making it a valid alternative to central bank-backed tokens. Its initial goal, Andjelic says, is the development of a unified RBI tokenisation system, which is starting in its home territories of Austria and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Its greater vision, however, is to have coins backed by other currencies, as it aspires to become the most innovative bank in the region. Christian Wolf, RBI’s head of strategic partnerships and ecosystems, believes
that hugely contrasting market conditions in the CEE make the region ripe for adopting such a payments system. “CEE in general is very fragmented, but this holds true even more for payments,” he says. “We have some markets that are super-advanced, even compared to Western European markets – the Czech Republic, Russia and Croatia, for example – but, on the other side, we still have many markets that are quite cash heavy and not using digital solutions to the same extent.” The absence of a crossborder faster payments system such as the Single European Payments Area Instant Credit Transfer (SEPA Inst) – which has not yet been fully adopted by some central EU member states and is not, in any case, available to their near-neighbours outside of Europe – was another factor driving a tokenised system. “You need to keep in mind that most CEE countries are not within the SEPA system. This is the reason for the emergence of a lot of national initiatives, www.fintech.finance