The UK's Financial Conduct Authority has implemented a permanent Digital Sandbox, making the testpad available full-time for firms wanting to try out innovative technologies.
Until now, the platform has only been available temporarily to those participating in pilots and TechSprints.
The FCA says that more than half of the previous Small to Medium Enterprise participants in the pilots and TechSprints made positive developments including launching new products, securing funding and partnerships, or receiving industry awards or recognitions.
Participants using the Sandbox will have permanent access to over 200 synthetic, public or anonymised data sets and over 1000 APIs to enable testing and validation of technology solutions. The range covers payments and transactions data, social media data, investment, Companies House and credit data. An observation deck enables regulators, incumbents and others to observe in-flight testing at a technical level.
From 1 August, the FCA will beging accepting applications for the Sandbox across a full spectrum of financial use cases, with approval promised within four weeks.