VTB Factoring uses the Lighthouse blockchain to buy a tokenized debt pool of industrial enterprises.

VTB Factoring, a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned bank, announced the first significant transaction involving digital finance assets. As part of the transaction, the bank subsidiary acquired a tokenized debt pool created by the engineering firm Metrowagonmash via the fintech platform Lighthouse.

VTB announced the transaction on its website on Wednesday, June 29, claiming it was the first issuance and placement of digital financial assets secured by cash in the Russian Federation. The bank compares it to the issuance of short-term commercial bonds in the announcement.

Anton Musatov, CEO of VTB Factoring, stressed the new technology’s potential for providing Russian enterprises with the capital they need for operational activities:

“Apart from the standard factoring procedure, [here] a client shouldn’t necessarily sign a service contract to sell its debt pool. The issuer’s readiness to tokenize it and the factoring bank’s decision to acquire it.”

Sber, Russia’s largest bank, said in June 2022 that its maiden operation with digital financial assets (DFA) will take place in mid-July, after finally securing a license from the country’s central bank.

While existing DFA legislation went into effect in 2020, the head of the Russian parliament’s lower chamber’s Financial Markets Committee submitted legislation in June 2022 that would outlaw the use of DFA as a “monetary substitute.”

VTB successfully tested the operation of “digital rubles,” a Bank of Russia central bank digital currency (CBDC) project, in February 2022. The bank later announced its first purchase of DFAs in exchange for digital rubles. At the time of publication, there was no word on whether the aforementioned transaction was completed through CBDC.