Spain, experimentation
Sandbox financiero (Ley 7/2020), and the fall in applications
Spain's Treasury ran a national financial regulatory sandbox under Law 7/2020 from 2021. Its first cohort drew 66 applications, 12 of which entered testing. By 2025 demand had fallen to two applications across the ninth and tenth cohorts, one of which received a favourable assessment, and the Government approved a draft law (Anteproyecto, 17 December 2024) that replaces closed cohorts with year-round intake and cuts pre-assessment to 45 working days.
2 applications, applications received in the 9th and 10th cohorts, 2025. 66 applications, applications received in the first cohort (peak), 2021. Secretaría General del Tesoro y Financiación Internacional (Ministry of Economy), Informe bienal del Sandbox financiero 2024-2025, retrieved 2026-10-01.
The move, and what it needed
The Treasury built a cohort-based sandbox in which the Bank of Spain, the securities regulator CNMV and the insurance supervisor DGSFP assessed and monitored tests under one statute, then fed the conclusions back into legislation. Demand collapsed once the first cohort's backlog cleared, and the Government answered with a draft law for year-round intake and a shorter pre-assessment.
Preconditions
- A statute that lets supervisors grant time-limited testing protocols without licensing
- Supervisors with staff to assess applications and write public conclusions for each test
- A steady supply of firms whose innovation is blocked by a specific rule, rather than one-off pent-up demand
Where else it has been used: The UK FCA's sandbox model was copied widely after 2016. Spain's cohort data show the common afterlife of such regimes: an opening surge, then thin demand once EU-level regimes and innovation hubs offer cheaper routes.
Limits: Applications measure demand for the regime. They do not measure the regime's regulatory value, and the Treasury reports its own programme. The first cohort's surge was partly pent-up demand from the two-year legislative delay before Law 7/2020, so 66 is an unusual peak and not a steady state. Some of the later fall may reflect substitutes rather than lost capability: the EU DLT Pilot Regime, MiCA, the Bank of Spain's innovation hub and new Spanish sandboxes such as the AI pilot under RD 817/2023, Eco-Lab and the mobility sandbox. Spain opened further sandboxes (AI pilot, Eco-Lab, mobility) modelled on this one. The same report counts 117 applications over ten cohorts, four projects fully in the market and three legal changes traced to tests: Law 6/2023 on DLT securities and fund units, and RD 668/2023 on pension contributions. Read as one regime, the decline is real. Read as Spain's whole sandbox capacity, it overstates erosion. Every figure is a PDF read and there is no machine-readable series. The cohort chart in section 1.1 gives per-cohort counts only as unlabelled values, so the record uses the two figures stated in prose.
This record describes what Spain delivered. It is linked to Firms through regulatory sandboxes because no comparable dataset measures that capability. It does not affect the score or confidence.
More from Spain
7 other deliveries from this country.
Spain built Cl@ve as a common public-sector platform for identification, authentication and electronic signatures; the Spanish Tax Agency reported 20.867 million taxpayer identifiers enrolled in Cl@ve Móvil by 31 December 2024, including 12.323 million citizens active in the app.
Kit Digital SME digitalisation programme
Spain's Red.es Kit Digital programme used public grants, volunteer representatives and private digitalising agents to help small firms adopt software and online services; by 3 August 2026 the programme reported 1,566,846 transformation projects delivered by 10,727 agents, 96 percent of them ICT SMEs.
Spain expanded high-speed rail from the first Madrid–Seville line in 1992 to more than 4,000 kilometres of high-speed track by 2024; the Transport Ministry reported that the service reached 70 percent of the population.
La Palma volcanic-eruption recovery and monitoring
After the Cumbre Vieja eruption began on 19 September 2021, Spain coordinated a state–Canary Islands–island recovery commission; by February 2024 the state reported €929 million mobilised and 650 CO2 monitoring devices installed, allowing more than 220 families to return safely to homes in affected areas.
Castor underground gas storage, and its closure
Spain extinguished the Castor underground gas-storage concession in October 2014 after seismic events halted operation; the state transferred administration to Enagás and the decree recognised €1.350729 billion in compensation for the former concessionaire, with recovery structured over 30 years.
Formación programada por las empresas (FUNDAE training credit)
Spain finances employer-organised training through rebates on firms' social security vocational-training contributions, managed by the state foundation FUNDAE. In 2024, 347,442 firms trained 3,378,343 workers, 22.7 percent of private-sector employees, across 5,824,016 participations.
Doctorados Industriales (State Research Agency industrial doctorates)
Spain's State Research Agency funds four-year contracts for doctoral candidates employed in firms and other entities to write a thesis on an industrial research or experimental development project; in the 2024-2 call, resolved in October 2025, it awarded 65 grants worth 7.6 million euros.
The same indicator elsewhere
44 deliveries linked to Firms through regulatory sandboxes in other countries.
The United Kingdom's financial regulator built the first regulatory sandbox in 2016, and by the end of 2022 had accepted 168 firms and products to test with real customers under supervision.
Korean regulatory-sandbox system across eight sectors
South Korea expanded its regulatory-sandbox system from ICT and industrial-convergence fields in January 2019 to eight sectoral regimes by 2024, adding finance, regulatory-free zones, smart cities, R&D zones, mobility and circular economy testing.
MAS FinTech Regulatory Sandbox variants
Singapore's Monetary Authority operates three FinTech Regulatory Sandbox variants—Sandbox, Sandbox Express and Sandbox Plus—giving firms distinct routes to test regulated products with real customers under defined safeguards.
Rede Nacional de Test Beds for company experimentation
ANI's National Innovation Report records 47 recognised Portuguese test beds and €150 million allocated to the national network for developing and testing new products and services at technology-readiness levels 5 to 9.
Zonas Livres Tecnológicas, regulator-supervised experimentation zones
ANI's National Innovation Report records four Portuguese Zonas Livres Tecnológicas (technological free zones) by the end of 2024, where innovators can test technology-based processes in real or near-real environments under continuous regulator supervision.
Banco Central regulatory sandbox, first cycle
Brazil's central bank opened its regulatory sandbox to applications in February 2021, received 52 projects, admitted seven to test under relaxed rules from 6 December 2021, and ran the cycle for one year with one permitted extension.
Reserve Bank of India regulatory sandbox
The Reserve Bank of India ran four themed sandbox cohorts between 2020 and 2024, retail payments, cross-border payments, MSME lending and fraud prevention, admitting 28 entities to test and finding 13 products viable in the three cohorts whose exits it published, and keeps the cohorts open on tap.
Capital Markets Authority regulatory sandbox
Kenya's Capital Markets Authority opened a regulatory sandbox under a 2019 policy guidance note and by January 2024 had let 11 firms exit it after live testing, with new admissions continuing into January 2025.
SEC Nigeria Regulatory Incubation Program
Nigeria's Securities and Exchange Commission opened a one-year Regulatory Incubation sandbox in September 2023 and had admitted seven firms across cohorts 001/23 and 002/24 to test capital-market products, then cleared seven more entities into its Accelerated Regulatory Incubation Programme in July 2026.
ADGM RegLab, the first fintech sandbox in the region
The Financial Services Regulatory Authority of Abu Dhabi Global Market opened its RegLab fintech sandbox to applications on 2 November 2016 and by August 2019 had admitted 32 firms from 83 applications from 20 countries, of which two had graduated to the live market.
OJK regulatory sandbox for financial-sector technological innovation
Indonesia's Financial Services Authority (OJK), running a regulatory sandbox since 2018 and under POJK 3/2024 since February 2024, had received 26 applications and approved 9 sandbox participants by December 2025, four of which had completed testing and been declared passed.
Bank Negara Malaysia Fintech Regulatory Sandbox
Bank Negara Malaysia has operated a fintech regulatory sandbox since October 2016 and added an accelerated Green Lane for financial institutions in February 2024; as of June 2026 it reported 139 Standard and Green Lane applications submitted to date and five solutions in live testing.
Bank of Thailand regulatory sandbox
The Bank of Thailand, which opened a fintech regulatory sandbox in late 2016, listed 10 sandbox project tracks as of April 2026, whose participant counts sum to 90, from QR payment (14) and biometrics (19) to letters of guarantee (18), the National Digital ID (12) and programmable payment.
South Africa's Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group, a joint body of the financial regulators, opened a cross-regulator sandbox in April 2020 that took 54 unique applications and admitted nine sandbox tests from eight firms in its first cohort, then moved to a rolling intake.
Project-based regulatory sandbox (new technology demonstration scheme)
Japan's cross-government regulatory sandbox, created in 2018 under the Productivity Improvement Act and made permanent in 2021 under the Industrial Competitiveness Enhancement Act, had approved 33 demonstration plans involving 152 businesses by 19 March 2025, across mobility, IoT, fintech and healthcare.
CFPB Compliance Assistance Sandbox, rescinded in 2022 and withdrawn again in 2025
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau opened a national Compliance Assistance Sandbox in September 2019, issued two sandbox approval orders in December 2020, terminated one of them in June 2022 and rescinded the policy with effect from 30 September 2022; a reissued version of January 2025 was withdrawn in May 2025.
CSA Regulatory Sandbox, succeeded by the Financial Innovation Hub
Canada's provincial securities regulators, acting jointly as the Canadian Securities Administrators, authorised 13 firms through the CSA Regulatory Sandbox between 2016 and 2021, before it was succeeded by the CSA Financial Innovation Hub and its decision list stopped being updated in December 2023.
ASIC enhanced regulatory sandbox
Australia's government introduced the enhanced regulatory sandbox on 1 September 2020, letting firms test financial services and credit activities for up to 24 months without a licence, and ASIC's register lists 23 users, four current and 19 past.
SINTEG-Verordnung, the energy-transition experimentation clause
Germany's federal government ran a time-limited regulatory experimentation clause for the SINTEG smart-energy showcases from June 2017 to June 2022, under which the Federal Network Agency received 49 notifications of experiments but only two claims for compensation of regulatory costs.
Experimenten Elektriciteitswet 2015-2018, and its erosion
The Dutch economy ministry let energy cooperatives and owners' associations deviate from the Electricity Act 1998 through 19 exemptions granted in four rounds between 2015 and 2018, then closed the scheme to new entrants; by 2024 only 10 of the experiments were operational.
Bac à sable réglementaire in the energy sector
Under the 2019 energy and climate law, France's energy regulator CRE and the energy directorate DGEC granted temporary derogations from network access rules to 30 projects, 25 by CRE and 5 by DGEC, of which six were running and reporting indicators in May 2025 and two had been generalised into regulation in 2024.
Italy's FinTech regulatory sandbox, and its contraction
Italy's FinTech sandbox, run by the Bank of Italy, Consob and IVASS under the MEF's FinTech Committee, admitted 16 projects from its first application window (November 2021 to January 2022) but only 3 from its second (November to December 2023), after applications fell by about 80.7 percent.
Bank of Ghana Regulatory Sandbox
The Bank of Ghana, which launched a regulatory and innovation sandbox pilot in 2021, admitted six firms into its Regulatory Sandbox for one year in January 2026 to test the exchange, custody, administration and issuance of virtual assets.
AFSA FinTech Lab at the Astana International Financial Centre
The Astana Financial Services Authority granted five FinTech Lab sandbox licences in 2022, saw the first participant graduate to a full licence that year, and had 18 licensed firms in its sandbox at the end of 2022.
Banque Centrale de Tunisie regulatory sandbox, first cohort
The Banque Centrale de Tunisie launched a regulatory sandbox in January 2020, admitted four fintech solutions to its first cohort in September 2020, ran tests with real customers and partner banks for 13 months, notified exit in September 2022, and drafted a circular on digital enrolment and remote bank account opening from the results (BCT Rapport annuel 2022).
Sandbox Regulatório do Banco de Moçambique
Banco de Moçambique admitted 11 participants, chosen from 19 applicants, to the sixth edition of its regulatory sandbox in March 2025, and at the same ceremony gave participation certificates to the five fintechs that had completed the fifth edition.
Regulatory Sandbox Licence of the Economic Development Board
Mauritius's Economic Development Board, operating a regulatory sandbox licence regime for innovative financial projects since September 2018 by the World Bank's dating, had nine firms in its sandbox when the World Bank compiled its global database of sandboxes in 2020.
Bank of Uganda regulatory sandbox
The Bank of Uganda reviewed five applications to its regulatory sandbox in the year to June 2025, issued deficiency letters to all of them, and reported one firm, Rexial Payment Systems Limited, exiting the sandbox after testing and applying for a payment systems operator licence.
Regulatory Sandbox Framework for Capital Markets, first cohort
Zambia's Securities and Exchange Commission admitted four innovations to the first cohort of its capital markets sandbox, with testing starting on 19 November 2021, and announced on 15 July 2024 that live testing had been completed and directed all four to suspend operations inside the sandbox pending evaluation and exit.
Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe regulatory sandbox
The Securities and Exchange Commission of Zimbabwe published a list of seven innovative financial technology solutions approved for testing in its regulatory sandbox in July 2026, among them asset, securities and infrastructure tokenisation platforms, a crowdfunding platform and a blockchain capital raising platform.
Austria's Financial Market Authority admitted eight FinTechs to its Regulatory Sandbox between its launch on 1 September 2020 and January 2023, five seeking authorisation as European crowdfunding service providers and three offering crypto-asset or securities services, and one participant had obtained a licence for a digital trading platform by the start of 2022.
Regulatorisk sandkasse for AI (Datatilsynet and Digitaliseringsstyrelsen)
Denmark's data protection authority and digitalisation agency selected two projects from 23 applications for the first round of their regulatory sandbox for AI in July 2024, two from 18 applications in June 2025 and three more in July 2026, seven projects in all.
Datatilsynet's regulatory sandbox for privacy-friendly innovation
Norway's data protection authority ran eight sandbox projects at the end of 2025, five of them jointly with the Financial Supervisory Authority on data sharing against financial crime, and completed two projects (Akershus University Hospital and Mobai's SALT biometric verification) during the year.
Bank of Lithuania regulatory sandbox, with one test in seven years
The Bank of Lithuania opened its regulatory sandbox to applications on 15 October 2018 and, by the page's last update on 27 June 2025, listed one innovation ever tested in it: UAB Workpower's peer-to-peer insurance platform, authorised on 13 June 2019 and tested from 24 October 2019 to 23 October 2020, which led the bank to draft proportionate rules for P2P insurance.
Narodna banka Slovenska regulatory sandbox
Slovakia's central bank opened its regulatory sandbox on 1 January 2022 and lists one former participant, Crowdberry Investment Platform, which entered on 22 November 2023, tested an electronic bulletin board for secondary trading of crowdfunded securities with selected clients from 15 December 2024 to 18 April 2025, and exited on 15 May 2025.
Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation and the Ukrainian Startup Fund opened a sandbox for AI and blockchain products in 2025 and, in its first year, received more than 80 applications and admitted 15 companies to a first cohort that completed testing.
Bank of Russia regulatory sandbox (regulativnaya pesochnitsa)
The Bank of Russia decided in 2025 to create the legal conditions for introducing 4 digital financial services piloted in its regulatory sandbox, out of 10 pilot applications it considered that year in identification, artificial intelligence, insurance, distributed ledgers and other areas.
JoRegBox, the Central Bank of Jordan regulatory sandbox
The Central Bank of Jordan approved three companies on 31 October 2024, out of nine applications to the first cohort of its JoRegBox regulatory sandbox launched in February 2024, to begin testing digital financial products with real customers, among them the escrow platforms E-Damana and Watheq.
The National Bank of the Kyrgyz Republic approved six special regulatory regimes between October 2020 and August 2026, letting a microcredit company, three payment and e-money firms and two banks test operations outside its standing rules, judged testing successful and closed for four of them between April 2022 and February 2025, and ended one early with the licence revoked in March 2022.
SECP Regulatory Sandbox, four cohorts and an open window
Pakistan's Securities and Exchange Commission approved 31 business models for testing in its Regulatory Sandbox across four annual cohorts from 2020 to 2023, out of 125 fintech applicants, with intake rising from six selected in the first cohort to 11 in the fourth.
Bank of Jamaica FinTech Regulatory Sandbox
The Bank of Jamaica's FinTech Regulatory Sandbox, effective from March 2020, had received 50 applications and approved 29 of them for testing by the end of 2025, including four new applications from three entities in 2025.
Financial Regulatory Commission sandbox regulatory environment
Mongolia's Financial Regulatory Commission admitted three products and services to its sandbox for one year in the fourth quarter of 2022 and released one, the MonPay digital bond, on 30 December 2022 after a year of testing, leaving four under test.
NAMFISA Regulatory Sandbox, microlending cohort
Namibia's non-bank financial regulator NAMFISA launched its Regulatory Sandbox in May 2023, received 10 applications for its first, microlending cohort, and had admitted three participants (ReferredBy Financial Solutions, Ergo Analytics trading as Verime, and the microlender Express Credit) with a fourth application under review by its 2025 annual report.
Central Bank of Azerbaijan regulatory sandbox
The Central Bank of the Republic of Azerbaijan began testing its first regulatory sandbox participant in December 2024 and admitted three more whose testing began in 2026, out of 14 applicants.