The Bank of Mozambique (BM) launched, last week, the third edition of the "Regulatory SandBox" for new Financial Technologies (Fintechs), and there are ten vacancies available, and by last Friday there were already 18 applications.

This is an initiative of the Central Bank for the promotion of the National Strategy for Financial Inclusion 2016-2022, which devotes efforts to bring banking services closer to Mozambicans. However, the project also focuses on technological innovation, so the contestants are challenged to respond to financial challenges through technology.

New financial technologies must meet three criteria, i.e. they must be able to feature electronic customer identification (e-KYC), payment aggregator, financial intermediation service, prediction of attempted money laundering (AML) and digital wallet.

On the occasion, the WB Governor, Rogério Zandamela, said that the expectation is to discover new services for the market that contribute to the promotion of financial inclusion.

And referring to the conditions of the second edition - in which seven fintechs participated, five national and two international - in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, he warned: "although [the pandemic] is relatively under control, it still requires, at all levels, response actions to mitigate its effects.

In the second edition, two new financial technologies were approved, namely "Pertence" and "Smart Key Service", out of a total of five that came to an end. The remaining ones are still being tested.

Approved Fintechs will be able to obtain licenses from the Bank of Mozambique to make their services and products available to the market.

The third edition has several partners, among them Financial Sector Deepening Mozambique, an institution focused on monitoring financial inclusion initiatives.

The Regulatory Sandbox encompasses the Innovation Hub, a space that brings together emerging entities, companies, regulators and providers, innovation experts, and others to discuss and create an ecosystem that stimulates innovation through the exchange of experience.