FinTech Sandbox

4 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 9 Amongst others are car companies, airlines, and health care systems, especially as regards payments and loans. Retail giants, such as Wal-Mart, and such technological titans as Apple and Google are working well with fin techs these days, says Fryer. She continues that Starbucks, the famous coffee chain, and countless other such entities that use popular computerized applications, are other examples. At its core, FinTech Sandbox provides a leg up for early-stage entrepreneurs around the world, says Fryer. It provides them with free access to critical data and the resources they need to build their products and get off the ground. Fryer adds, FinTech Sandbox’s mission focuses on making entrepreneurship more accessible and inclusive, lowering the barriers to launching a start-up, especially as regards the requirements for the necessary data and infrastructure. Some 300 start-ups from all over the world have so far taken part in FinTech Sandbox’s data access residency. They cover all aspects of financial technology services, as Fryer points out. “Let’s say,” she hypothesizes, “that you’re looking to help improve people’s credit and get them out of debt faster. Or you want to build an impact-investing tool or help small businesses get paid faster. You need data on the back end to power that, whether it be credits or stock prices or income data or news.” Hard as it may be to believe, such data can easily cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, as Fryer reveals. It can be very tough to afford such services and get the data you need to build out your products. Indeed, Fryer adds, such things can be the kiss of death for a new business. “That’s really why FinTech Sandbox exists,” she continues, “and why we offer free data sets to fin tech entrepreneurs.” Last year, as Fryer informs, FinTech Sandbox saved its start-ups some $5 million in data costs alone. This, she says, is very exciting, and it’s very rewarding helping such start-ups get to their next stage. “The interesting thing about working with the earliest stages of companies is you get to see the merging and get a front-row seat to that,” she says. Artificial intelligence (or AI) is a current hot topic, Fryer notes, as is ChatGPT (or chat-generative