The Association of Financial Innovation (AFI) in Russia has prepared a draft outlining the roadmap for improving the regulation of National Payment System, PlusWorld.ru reported.

The draft has been posted for preliminary discussions on the Association's website. After discussion, the road map will be presented to the State Duma, the Ministry of finance and the Bank of Russia Rosfinmonitoring.

According to the report, the main provisions of the roadmap include, among other things, the implementation of blockchain technology for identification of clients:

“Along with expansion opportunities in the short term transactions under the simplified identification of clients, develop an approach and implement a single identifier (possibly using blockchain technology)”, as reported by PlusWorld.ru (loosely translated).

The news follows the recent announcement about the setting up of an Association for Financial Technologies Development (FinTech Association) by the Bank of Russia. The central bank had said that the participants will study and introduce the most promising technologies, including distributed ledger, open application program interface (open API) and remote identification technologies, as well as to create a single payment space for households and legal entities, etc.

The Russian central bank has started experimenting with the blockchain technology. In October 2016, the bank announced a technical prototype for financial messaging, based on the distributed ledger technology (DLT), called ‘Masterchain’, which allows prompt confirmation of data actuality with respect to a customer and a transaction as well as fast creation of various financial opportunities for the market participants to provide game-changing products and services to their customers.