Facilitating Innovative Business Through Regulatory Flexibility: The Arizona Fintech Sandbox And Its Global Context
In 2018, Arizona enacted the first regulatory sandbox for fintech in the United States aimed at fostering consumer-benefitting innovation in payments and lending, among others. As other similar programs have since been announced (including more in the U.S.), regulators around the world, led by the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority, have inquired into sandbox programs being leveraged as a means of facilitating more cross-border innovation. With the Arizona program’s success, American state regulators are poised to add their experience and expertise to cross-border trials and very well may be the best positioned agencies in the United States to facilitate testing in an area ripe for advancing innovation