A ‘Sandbox’ Designed To Aid Fintech Startups

Playing in the sand is something generally meant for kids playing at the beach, but the phrase is going to take on new meaning, thanks to Thomson Reuters, Fidelity Investments and Amazon.com. The three companies launched Fintech Sandbox, which is designed too support technology startups aiming to serve the financial services industry.

According to a recent American Banker article, Fintech Sandbox is incorporated as a non-profit, and Fintech will provide free or discounted datasets they can use to build their applications and demonstrate their products.

David Jegen is the managing director of Devonshire Investors, the private investment arm of the Johnson family – which controls Fidelity. Jegen explained to the Boston Globe that Fintech entrepreneurs have to deal with the high cost of data to help them build applications.

“They raise $2 million of venture capital funding, and then spend $500,000 of it buying market data from Bloomberg or Thomson Reuters,” Jegen said. “Or they show up to customers, who say, ‘Nice app, but it hasn’t been tested on robust data sets.’ We think that is a problem we can help solve.”

As explained by American Banker, Fintech Sandbox will help selected startups access financial information and sample data sets provided by the founders, other supporters, and sources.

“What’s Hot” is aggregated content. PYMNTS.com claims no responsibility for the accuracy of the content published by the original source.