FinTech Sandbox

FinTech Sandbox is a nonprofit organization that offers financial data feeds and APIs for development, including market, banking, investment, and corporate fundamentals data. The organization operates within a partner network that aims to enable accelerated approval for FinTech Sandbox program participants to speed up the licensing process. It was founded with the objective of counteracting the high cost and general inaccessibility of data faced by start-ups in the FinTech sector.

FinTech Sandbox offers companies access to infrastructure and platform services from its partner network. The program hands out up to $15,000 in Amazon Web Services credits per start-up and business-level AWS support of up to $5,000 per start-up.

FinTech Sandbox does not take any equity or request any fees for participation, although each program participant is requested to be an engaged member of the FinTech Sandbox community. Participants can contribute by taking part in events, mentoring, and sharing advice with other start-ups in the program. The start-ups accepted into the program are connected with FinTech Sandbox's lead at a specific provider, and a six-month contract is initiated.

FinTech Sandbox is open to all financial services start-ups that can use financial data products offered by the organization for product development and testing. The program's objective is to offer data to start-ups that could not otherwise afford it. Businesses in the accelerator phase are also eligible. During the program, participants are not allowed to use data from FinTech Sandbox's partners for profit in a production setting. Data from the organization's partners is intended only for product testing and development purposes. The full criteria list is as bullet-pointed below:

• Completed incorporation
• A full-time dedicated leadership team
• Presence of a chief technology officer (CTO) and developers
• Presence of active funding or revenue (not required but advantageous)
• Demonstrable alpha-stage product
• Well-defined use cases for the platform's data

FinTech Sandbox accepts start-ups on a rolling basis. Once an application is submitted, the qualifications and data use case is reviewed, and a response is given to the applicant within three to five business days. If the organization is interested in the applicant, they will be contacted via email to arrange a first-round interview. Applicants that pass the first-round interview will then be notified regarding participation in a second-round interview, which requires the presentation of a fifteen minute live product demo to the members of FinTech Sandbox's board. As a final step, each application is reviewed, and applicants are notified of the result.

The program is virtual. Daily activity and data partner interactions take place through Slack, GitHub, and email platforms. The organization produces many in-person events across the United States in the course of the year, including annual Demo Days that provide seven to eight selected program participants an opportunity to present their financial solutions to a select FinTech community.

FinTech Sandbox's promotional overview video