One of the latest Ethereum-based trade finance platforms has been introduced in Russia with the third largest retail player in the country as a key player.
After a six-month pilot phase, Russian blockchain startup Factorian declared Tuesday that it's releasing its system into production with Dixy. Dixy is mainly a supermarket chain with 2% of the Russian market and over $5 million in revenue in 2018.
As it is established on the private version of Ethereum, the new system will help Dixy's suppliers to accept payments in one business day rather than two days. The platform links with some of the banks and factoring firms (these carry out the settlements between the retailer and multiple suppliers) through a single interface, as per the Factorin co-founder Andrei Maklin.
Here, the initial two participants are Russian banks, Alfa Bank and Pervouralsk bank, along with some factoring companies in the country, Factorin stated. The platform can be accessed by participants on both, desktop as well as mobile.
The product is in the pilot phase from the last six months, and has completed 12,000 test transactions until now, Maklin said Coindesk. “Now with the testing, we see that the platform significantly reduces the time of settlement, and we’re going into production” he said.
Julia Zhuvaga, who is the Chief Financial Officer at Dixy, confirmed the news by stating,
“Tech visionaries like to thrill the public with the stories of the beautiful future, but in reality, top management in any company wants to see better results not in a couple of years but as soon as possible. This platform allows us to see the change here and now.”
As per Maklin, there are total 20 nodes in the network currently, out of which two are full-fledged nodes on the participants' servers. Three more nodes are in the process of being set up, others are working on the cloud.
He further said, “Working with Dixy for us became an example of innovation in the large companies. We have ambitious plans for retail and other industries.” The platform is ready to improve its services so that it can be adopted for various types of businesses.