FCA Launches Permanent Digital Sandbox to Foster Fintech Innovation
The UK's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has announced the launch of a permanent version of its Digital Sandbox.
Building on the success of its trial phase, the sandbox will provide firms with a secure environment to test their products at an early stage of development, the regulator said on its website on Thursday.
The Digital Sandbox began operating on a trial basis in 2020. It offers firms access to data sets, application program interfaces (APIs), and data security protection.
During the pilot phases, it was used to evaluate sustainability performance, including eco-friendly decentralized ledgers.
"Following two successful pilots, our digital sandbox will be made available permanently on 1 August 2023, opening up the platform to an even broader range of innovative businesses, start-ups and data providers," the FCA said.
One of the key benefits of a sandbox is that developers can test and evaluate their products without any unintended side effects impacting a live environment.
The FCA's offering can also be configured to support a range of distributed ledgers and digital asset use cases, such as building interoperability between networks.
More specifically, the environment can be used to experiment with innovative concepts for the banking, investment, lending, payments, insurance, and pensions sectors.
Regulators will have the opportunity to observe ongoing technical testing at an early stage.
The FCA stated that the digital sandbox offers access to over 200 datasets and more than 1,000 APIs for testing and validating their experiments.
These datasets encompass payments, transactions, social media, and credit data.
Furthermore, the watchdog said the platform also has implemented robust data security protection measures to
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