The 8th Annual Conference on Electronic Banking & Payment Systems will be held at Tehran’s Milad Tower January 29-30, 2019 with focus on ‘Blockchain Revolution’.
The expo aims at exploring the role, significance and opportunities of the emerging blockchain technology in different industries, banking in particular.
As the global financial industry’s interest in new technologies like blockchain increases, neglecting the trend could deprive the domestic banking industry of valuable opportunities and the use of modern business models.
Blockchain is now considered as a revolution in technology which could augur evolution in different fields. A considerable share of global production will come via the blockchain in the coming decades, IBENA reported.
Blockchain is a technology that uses distributed databases, math and cryptography to record transactions.
At its most basic, blockchain is literally just a chain of blocks — only, not in the conventional sense of the words. When we say the words “block” and “chain” in this context, we are indeed talking about digital information (the “block”) stored in a public database (the “chain”), according to Investopedia.
Introducing radical change to the architecture of payment systems and banking settlements, blockchain technology provides, among other things, a platform to banks to decrease costs, increase security, increase transparency, boost speed of financial transfers and transactions.
Topics to be discussed among experts and specialists during the Tehran meeting include cryptocurrencies, legal and regulatory frameworks, regional and global trends.
Alternative payment systems and introducing new payment methods during the US sanctions era are a priority issue of the conference.
Circumventing US sanctions with the help of cryptocurrencies has always been a talking point when it comes to Iran, especially since the country is developing its own virtual currency. Officials in Tehran have advocated the use of virtual currency to boost trade with foreign partners.
Earlier, the chief of the Informatics Services Corporation announced that the banking system is planning to make use of a national cryptocurrency. Developed by the ISC at the behest of the Central Bank of Iran, the cryptocurrency is launched by the CBI and can be transferred from person to person without intermediaries on a distribution platform.
Aboutaleb Najafi said the currency is in the pilot phase and will be usable in the banking system after official CBI endorsement. In the first phase, the blockchain infrastructure and the national cryptocurrency will be given to commercial banks for banking transactions and settlements.
The cryptocurrency will be backed by the national currency, the rial. In exchange for issuing each unit of the national cryptocurrency, its equivalent in rial in the CBI account will be blocked.
