Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank, Blockchain Firm Billon To Pilot Digitized National Currency

Blockchain, Innovation, News | May 20, 2020 By:

Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) is planning to pilot the use of cryptocurrency for money transfers and custody with corporate and institutional clients after a successful proof-of-concept with Polish blockchain firm Billon.

In a press release, RBI and Billon said that they decided to extend a successful proof-of-concept of a national currency tokenization platform into a pilot project, which will include selected RBI corporate and institutional clients. The pilot, which will be carried out by the end of 2020, will use Billon’s Digitized Distributed Cash system, which enables tokenization of national currency.

The tokenization platform, initially called RBI Coin, was developed by Billon during the Elevator Lab program, concluded on March 5. The system is designed to speed up cross-border interbank or intercompany transactions and improve liquidity management.

“With the system, e-money transactions can be supplemented with additional documents or data, such as invoices and confirmation of source of funds, for full transparency and audit trail,” the release said. “End-to-end benefits will be estimated at the end of the pilot, but Billon expects the bank to improve customer experience, differentiate its offering and achieve process and cost efficiencies in several categories.”

Stefan Andjelic, Blockchain Hub Lead at Raiffeisen Bank International, said that Billon is a great example of a FinTech that understands how to adapt blockchain to serve the needs of banks and their clients.

“Specifically during the COVID-19 situation, banks need to partner with FinTechs to innovate faster and help clients with payments processing and liquidity needs,” said Andjelic.