Tinkoff Bank opens fintech development hub in Moscow
Russian online-only Tinkoff Bank has opened a development hub at the Skolkovo innovation centre in the Mozhaysky District of Moscow.
The bank says its team will focus on delivering new business solutions based on blockchain, and voice and face recognition technologies.
Improving Tinkoff’s financial ecosystem will be the hub’s first priority – with blockchain-based solutions and cryptoeconomics research “instrumental in achieving this goal”.
In addition, the team will engage in developing biometric technologies to “enhance customer experience, improve the security of financial transactions and augment in-store analytics”.
Tinkoff Bank has already partnered with several (unnamed) existing residents of the Skolkovo Foundation’s IT cluster, integrating their software into its ATMs.
Sergey Dutov, director of business development and industrial partners, IT cluster, Skolkovo, says the bank is “quick and consistent in pursuing its technology initiatives” and back in June 2017, Oleg Tinkov (founder of Tinkoff Bank) attended the annual start-up forum and signed a cooperation agreement with the Skolkovo Foundation.
Rush
Tinkoff Bank is keeping busy.
A week ago it teamed up with Russia’s Agency for Housing Mortgage Lending to set up a joint venture to offer online mortgages.
The platform will support automated approvals based on AHML standards, execute loan documentation and issue loans, enable online registration of property transactions with the Federal Service for State Registration, Cadastre and Cartography (aka Rosreestr) – and can be integrated with the systems of other Russian mortgage lenders.
While last month, the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), Tinkov and Tinkoff Bank managers established a RUB 100 million ($1.7 million) endowment fund to support artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) research.
The fund has become the largest MIPT endowment, and is an open fund, which means that MIPT alumni joining Tinkoff Bank will be able to contribute to the fund at a later stage.
