Wirecard, Telegram’s TON partner to develop digital financial services and banking platform

TON Labs, the infrastructure and ecosystem developer for the Telegram Open Network (TON), has partnered with European financial services provider Wirecard to develop a joint digital financial services, payments and banking platform.

Telegram, a cloud-based multi-platform messaging application with more than 200 million active users, is working to launch TON – a fast, secure and scalable blockchain and network platform offering smart contracts, upgradeable formal blockchain specifications, support for micropayment channels and off-chain payment networks.

Earlier this month, reports suggested that TON has entered private beta testing phase.

Under the partnership, Wirecard will bring its extensive experience in developing new, innovative digital financial services and TON Labs will contribute its cutting edge infrastructure solutions to build new joint products and services within TON's and Telegram's vast, globally growing ecosystem.

"We are excited to be partnering with TON Labs. Their immense experience in highly scalable technology and decentralized solutions as well as the strong global growth of Telegram messenger will be instrumental for the success of our joint program," said Georg von Waldenfels, Executive Vice President, Group Business Development at Wirecard.

Telegram says that its integration with TON will make blockchain technologies and distributed services finally available and accessible to millions of ordinary users.

"The addition of TON Blockchain to Telegram's growing ecosystem is opening new opportunities for business and technological innovation. We are excited to partner with one of the world's most dynamic and innovative financial technology companies to bring synergetic new generation fintech solutions to the market," added Alexander Filatov, Managing Partner at TON Labs.

According to the press release, the partners plan to announce the release of products in stages and communicate more details around the availability of the services in due course.

Wirecard was recently in news after German financial regulator BaFin filed a complaint about potential market manipulation of the company’s shares.