eBusiness Weekly
Business Writer
Zimbabwe’s central bank has approved the admission of two financial technology firms into the regulatory sandbox in a bid to boost innovation by fintech firms.
A sandbox, also known as a controlled environment for testing new products, technologies and services on a few customers, allows fintech companies to test new products, such as making payments using a smartphone, on real customers – all without having to go through a costly and lengthy full authorisation process first.
The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ), said Llyod Crowd Funding was providing capital raising solutions while Uhuru Innovative Solutions was providing money transfer solutions.
“Llyod Crowd Funding has commenced its Sandbox operations and will test for a period of 12 months up to May 2023 while Uhuru Innovative Solutions will soon commence regulatory testing,” said the central bank. “The initiation of regulatory testing is a signal of the bank’s commitment to promoting responsible innovation and the results are expected to provide the bank with critical evidence in the formation of an appropriate regulatory framework for financial technology in the country.”
It said the bank expects to embark on regulatory testing with other promising sandbox applications shortly.
The central bank said registrations on the Fintech regulatory sandbox continued to be dominated by the technology sector.
Applications to carry out sandbox testing are largely focused on financial inclusion products (28 percent), retail payments (18 percent), and equity crowdfunding (10 percent), which account for more than half of sandbox applications, the RBZ said.
Other sandbox testing are focused on money transfer services, wealth management and mobile money services.
