Bank of Ghana launches regulatory and innovation sandbox pilot
The Bank of Ghana (BoG) has launched a regulatory and innovation sandbox pilot in collaboration with EMTECH Service LLC.
The BoG says the move is in line with its commitment to evolving an enabling and inclusive regulatory environment that promotes FinTechs and supports innovation.
A statement from the BoG said within the financial sector, a regulatory and innovation sandbox is a supportive and controlled policy environment that enables firms to test innovative products, services, and business models under the supervision of a regulator.
According to the statement, the regulatory and innovation sandbox will provide a forum for financial sector innovators to interact with the sector regulator to test digital financial service innovations while evolving enabling the regulatory environment.
“In this regard, the BoG and the innovator are able to assess the usefulness, viability, and safety of innovations through shared understanding of their respective interests.”
“The sandbox will be available to banks, specialized deposit-taking institutions, and payment service providers including dedicated electronic money issuers as well as unregulated entities and persons that have innovations that meet the sandbox requirements,” the statement said.
“Within the broad categories outlined, the Bank of Ghana would give preference to products and services leveraging blockchain technology, remittance products, crowdfunding products and services, e-KYC (electronic know your customer) platforms, RegTech (regulatory technology), SupTech (supervisory technology), digital banking, products and services targeting women financial inclusion and innovative merchant payment solutions for micro, small and medium-size enterprises (MSMEs),” the statement added.
“The Bank of Ghana through this project would like to reaffirm its commitment to addressing the financial inclusion needs of the unbanked and underserved persons and businesses,” it said.
