The central bank will set supervision to 10 of the submitted projects. Solutions with blockchains and digital identity also received the go-ahead.
The General Secretariat of the Treasury and International Financing of Spain announced that 18 fintech projects, 9 of them related to cryptocurrencies and blockchains, received official authorization to take part in the first edition of the regulatory sandbox. Selected initiatives include platforms for payment with crypto assets, digital identity, and solutions based on distributed ledgers.
The first call received in February a total of 67 proposals that seek to make the local financial sector evolve. After weeks of analysis, only 18 projects were admitted, that is, 27% of all initiatives.
These solutions will now go to the testing process, in which they will receive supervision from regulators who will approve their operation under established financial standards. The Bank of Spain will coordinate 10 projects, the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV) another 4, and the General Directorate of Insurance and Pension Funds the rest.
The secretariat explained in a statement that the projects must comply with current regulations on the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing, as well as on the protection of financial services clients. The entity also recalled that the proposals must comply with current regulations in the case of working with the personal data of users.
Cryptocurrencies and Financial Improvements in Spain
The favored proposals related to the environment of cryptocurrencies, tokens, and blockchains were: Eurocoinpay, a platform to drive payments with digital assets; Realfund, a project that focuses its efforts on the tokenization of real estate and Dalion, a digital identity solution on distributed registries.
The project called “Issuance and custody of tokenized shares of an investment fund”, belonging to the Onyze consortium, Renta 4, Allfunds Blockchain, and IoBuilders also received approval. Another proposal from Santander bank called “Digital custody on blockchain” will also be supervised by the regulatory authorities.
Four other initiatives such as those of Lithium 100, Vottum-Intercompany, MarketPlace, and the Intelligent Death Insurance, also use blockchains for their proposals and were favored. Now all projects must establish guidelines, in the company of their supervisory entities and define what will be the protocol for evaluations.
Spain Approves Technologic Innovation
In February of last year, Spain approved the regulatory sandbox for fintech innovations. Since then, startups in the sector have been looking for submitting their projects and receive their proper evaluation to pass the tests and receive certification to offer their services under a regulated environment.
Now startups that offer capital market financial services, products related to insurers, means of payments, personal finance, loans, blockchains, or cryptocurrencies, among others, will have a regulated testbed to improve their services before its appearance in the market, just in case of complying with the established regulations.
Space will depend on and will be coordinated by the General Secretariat of the Treasury and International Financing but the Bank of Spain, the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), and the General Directorate of Insurance and Pension Funds will also participate in its management.
By: Jenson Nuñez
