One of the largest Russian banks in terms of assets recently carried out a successful trial that involved using its mobile app for conducting transactions with the digital ruble.

Promsvyazbank is one of the state-owned banking institutions that found itself subjected to sanctions imposed by Western countries earlier this year because of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

CBDC trials

One of the first Russian lenders to have joined the trials of the digital ruble is Promsvyazbank. The Bank of Russia has been working on the development of the central bank digital currency (CBDC) for quite a while.

The bank recently used its mobile app for carrying out transactions with the CBDC. In order to make a transaction, participants first had to complete the registration process and then open a digital wallet.

Then they had to use their account with the bank to exchange their regular fiat money for digital rubles. Once they had done so, they could transfer the CBDC to other clients of the bank.

In addition, the funds could also be sent to clients of other banks that are also participating in the central bank digital currency’s pilot project.

The details

All details about the transactions that were carried out with the digital ruble could be found on the digital ruble platform that the Russian central bank is operating.

According to the report, the balances of the digital wallets of the users were immediately reflected in the smartphone app.

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) launched the prototype of the platform in the previous year. Alexander Chernoshchekin is the Senior Vice President of the bank which oversees its digital business unit.

He said that PSB was one of the first banks to have implemented an understandable and simple technology to conduct transactions with the digital rubles via a mobile app and test it successfully.

He further added that the instrument had a lot of potentials and could become Russia’s new settlement standard.

Future operations

The executive also asserted that since the test had been successful, it could help in carrying out operations with the digital ruble in the future.

In addition, it would also offer greater opportunities to businesses and people in Russia. The people will be able to make secure and reliable transfers using digital currency.

Moreover, it would also offer the government new tools for targeting social payments and managing the budget.

According to Chernoschchekin, businesses will also be able to enjoy the benefits of the new settlement technology because it could be used for automating internal business processes and payments.

The accounting and storage of the digital ruble ecosystem would be the responsibility of the Central Bank of Russia (CBR) and it also claims that all payments are encrypted.

The Bank of Russia states that other measures have also been implemented for fraud prevention. Almost a dozen lending institutions had decided to join the testing phase of the CBDC.

Russia intends to fully launch the digital currency in 2024 and has accelerated the schedule in light of the Western sanctions.