The Financial Conduct Authority will make its Digital Sandbox fintech initiative permanent from 1 August and open it up to all firms.

The Digital Sandbox has allowed firms to trial and test fintech business ideas in a safe environment.

So far 600 fintech ideas have been trialled through the Sandbox.

The FCA says the move to permanent status will open up the facility to a broader range of technology firms and providers.

The Digital Sandbox is seen by the FCA as a testing environment that enables firms at the early stages of product development to experiment with new concepts.

The platform had only previously been made available temporarily to those participating in pilots.

The FCA said its sandbox will foster innovation and growth, with over half of the participants in the trials launching new products, securing funding or receiving industry awards.

The FCA says the participants in the sandbox will have access to: high-quality datasets and APIs, robust data security protection, a collaborative platform and an observation deck to enable third parties to observe testing at a technical level.

Applicants for the sandbox will need to prove their project is in scope, a genuine innovation, provides customer benefit, is ready for testing, and that there is a requirement for support.

The approval process for new projects will take a maximum of 4 weeks.