The Reserve Bank of India has announced the opening of application window for the third cohort under the regulatory sandbox to eligible entities.
The application for the third cohort may be submitted from October 1 to November 14, 2021. The theme for the third cohort is MSME lending.
The RBI also stated that it received 27 applications from 26 entities under the second cohort, of which eight have been selected for the test phase.
The eight companies that have been selected are: Book My Forex, Cashfree Payments India, Fairex Solutions, Flyremit, Nearby Technologies, Open Financial Technologies, SoCash India, and Wall Street Finance. They will commence testing of their products from the third week of September, 2021.
The RBI had announced the second cohort on December 16, 2020, with the theme ‘cross border payments.’
Regulatory sandbox is the live testing of new products or services, for which regulators can allow certain relaxations. The objective of the regulatory sandbox is to foster innovation in financial services, promote efficiency and bring benefit to consumers. Users can test the product’s viability without the need for a larger and more expensive rollout if the product appears to have the potential to be successful.
Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank also announced that six entities have completed the test phase of the first cohort on retail payments. The six entities are: Nucleus Software Exports, Tap Smart Data Information Services, Natural Support Consultancy Services, Naffa Innovations, Ubona Technologies, and Eroute Technologies. Their products mainly deal with offline digital payments, prepaid cards, contactless payment and voice-based UPI.
