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Despite Russian banks being unfriendly towards bitcoin, Qiwi is planning to develop its own Cryptocurrency.
The Qiwi Wallet is a Russian electronic payment system and credit card processor, launched at the end of 2007. The system allows customers to quickly and conveniently make online purchases, online payments, and much more. The Payment services provider Qiwi PLC (NASDAQ: QIWI) is currently one of the most popular Russian online payment Services providers. The company announced it was planning to issue its own digital currency and start using the blockchain technology. The company already engaged negotiations with the Bank of Russia, and there had been informal meetings with representatives regarding the launch of the new crypto currency.
Early this year, the Bank of Russia issued a statement in which it warned about the use of cryptocurrencies may be regarded as criminal activity. A lot of cryptocurrency related businesses have stopped offering Bitcoin services since then.
Vladimir Putin, The President of Russia, already expressed himself favorably to this new technology; however, the country still has its back turned on bitcoin and fear that it could be banned been rising for some time.
Nevertheless, according to the head of Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina, the Russian bank isn’t going to ban digital currency and blockchain technologies and even sees a future with it. To analyze the case, the Bank of Russia named a research group for studying the use and the potential benefits of bitcoin and Blockchain technologies. The group will try to learn in what ways this new technology could be used for payments in the country.
Although new technologies, including crypto technologies like blockchain, seems to be increasing, the Russian lawmakers strictly oppose the use of cryptocurrencies.
Russian financial authorities fear that digital currencies could be used to finance terrorism or routed to money laundering, but the company is trying to convince the country’s regulators that the technology is much more than that.
Qiwi’s assigned Bitruble project manager Alexei Arkhipov, revealed that the main difficulty the Bank was now facing was the general absence of regulating models for the digital currency market and other relevant technologies in the country.
If the company gets an approval from the Bank, it plans to launch the new digital currency called “Bitruble” as soon as next year with estimates for the initial expenses to cost several hundred million rubles.
In the end, it seems that the Russian Central Bank is taking a favorable stance on the “Bitruble” proposal and a positive view of Qiwi’s plan to launch its “Bitruble”, so let’s wait for its final decision.
