Russian private commercial bank Alfa-Bank has officially announced that it is has become a member of the blockchain consortium led by R3.

Headquartered in New York, the consortium counts a number of major banks, financial institutions, trade associations, professional services firms, and technology companies among its members. This includes Bank of America, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Barclays, Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, Citibank, Morgan Stanley, and others.

"Joining the R3 consortium is an important milestone in the integration of Alfa-Bank, the first Russian participant bank and, eventually, the entire Russian banking community into the newest global financial infrastructure," said Maria Shevchenko, Alfa Bank's chief operating officer. "This is an excellent opportunity, together with the leading players in the global market, to create new instruments for performing financial transactions, as well as significantly speed up mutual settlement of transactions and reduce the cost of individual operations."

The consortium members work closely with R3 to continue the development of Corda – an enterprise blockchain platform designed to record, manage and synchronise contracts and other shared data between trading partners and to meet the complex requirements of the world's largest financial institutions.