S7 Airlines, in partnership with Sberbank, is implementing a ticket purchase system using a blockchain-based platform, smart contracts and tokens. The service will be available to ticket agents who have corporate accounts in Sberbank.

Sberbank and S7 will start selling tickets for tokens. The blockchain-based platform will allow air ticket agents who have accounts in Sberbank to instantly make settlements with the airline through smart contracts using a virtual unit of account, tokens, pegged to real customer accounts. The launch of the project is scheduled for September 2020.

Thanks to the use of the blockchain-based platform and token payment system, the speed of settlements will increase from ten days with the standard procedure to 20 seconds. Also, agents will not need bank guarantees and advances. Money from the agent's account will be tokenized and transferred to the seller according to the algorithms recorded in the smart contract.

“The blockchain-based platform allows us to constantly expand the network of agents who work directly with S7 Airlines. We note the high interest among partners. The growth rate of turnover through the blockchain-based platform is constantly increasing: in the first seven months of 2020 alone, we managed to reach the level of the annual turnover of 2019, 1.5 billion rubles,” said Igor Veretennikov, deputy general director for sales of the S7 Group.

“The joint project of Sberbank and S7 Airlines is unique because, for the first time in Russia, settlements on a blockchain-based platform will be carried out using tokens secured by funds on the client's account,” said Anatoly Popov, deputy chairman of the board of Sberbank. “The use of a virtual unit of account allowed Sberbank to solve a number of technical problems and create a universal tokenization platform... The “conversion” process is rather technical in nature, it can be seamless and imperceptible for the user”.

Earlier a Russian bank for the first time issued a loan secured by cryptocurrencies. The loan was issued by Expobank to businessman Mikhail Uspensky through the conclusion of an individual bank loan agreement and secured by Waves tokens.