Gazprombank, the banking division of gas company Gazprom, announced this Thursday that it is going to launch a cryptocurrency service next year.
According to a statement released by the company, the new service is going to go live in its Swiss division in the middle of 2019.
The new service is the result of developments in institutional-grade cryptocurrency technology.
Gazprombank will be using SILO, a product developed by Blockchain technology company Metaco.
Addressing one of the key concerns of financial institutions that want to deal in Cryptocurrencies , SILO is a custody solution that allows companies to securely store their digital assets and make transactions with them.
Metaco has integrated SILO into one of Avaloq's Banking Suite product. An older, more established company, Avaloq supplies 'core banking' products to some major financial institutions, including HSBC, Barclays, and the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Banking Suite is the best-known and most used product. It allows users to perform an array of different functions - whether it's engaging with customers or looking at account balances.
Gazprombank - Secure Settlement
Banking Suite's integration with SILO should make for a fairly comprehensive cryptocurrency management platform. It's probably for this reason that Gazprombank has decided to use it.
"Thanks to the close integration of the Metaco storage solution, banking and wealth management customers won’t have to trust additional third parties when trading with cryptocurrencies," said Thomas Beck, Group Chief Technology Officer at Avaloq. "By bringing together all asset classes in one portfolio view, the solution will also ensure the highest levels of convenience and usability.”
According to a statement released by the three companies involved, when the system goes live next year, Gazprombank will be able to "buy, sell and transfer crypto assets and currencies on behalf of clients and provide a consolidated portfolio view, without any need for a crypto-wallet or private key management."
Developments in blockchain technology are making cryptocurrencies increasingly attractive to institutional firms.
This Thursday morning, for example, Natixis, ING, Rabobank, and Commerzbank announced that they had completed a commercial paper trade using R3's Corda blockchain.
