- The short — this week’s snapshot
- Where the sandbox stands
- What’s being tested (illustrative)
- Gates: entry → testing → exit
- How to choose your lane
- Bank & fintech checklists
- FAQ
The short
- Theme concentration: Payments resilience and consent-first credit remain dominant.
- Data rails: AA-led flows with explicit purpose binding get smoother approvals.
- Testing focus: Incident drills, fraud throttling, and explainable models in scope.
- Exit reality: Most pilots scale only with a sponsoring bank and clear ops runbooks.
- Time-boxing: Applicants with pre-arranged data partners move faster through gates.
Where the sandbox stands
| Area | Status (directional) | Key note |
|---|---|---|
| Active cohorts | Payments, Digital Lending, RegTech | Security, consent, and recovery drills in scope |
| Pipeline | Cross-border LRS-lite, MSME cash-flow | Data-sharing & settlement design under review |
| Footfall | Healthy; many first-time applicants | Shortlisted teams show readiness with bank partners |
| Conversion | Selective | Production rollouts depend on sponsor banks and control evidence |
What sponsors push for
- Clear kill-switch and client-data vaulting before they commit to go-live.
- Cost-to-serve math that holds at scale; vendor exit plan defined.
What applicants underestimate
- Production logs & audit trails requirements; need for immutable evidence.
- Disaster-recovery playbooks and quarterly drill expectations.
What’s being tested (illustrative)
| Lane | Prototype | Proof points sought | Go/No-go red flags |
|---|---|---|---|
| Payments | Device-binding + risk-scored OTP throttling | False-positive rate < 2%; MTTR on incident drills | Opaque ML; no incident post-mortems |
| Credit | AA-based cash-flow underwriting | Lift vs bureau baseline; consent revocation handling | Shadow profiling; unverifiable features |
| RegTech | Real-time STR triggers & entity graphing | Precision/recall on labelled sets; SIEM integration | Hard-coded thresholds; no tuning audit |
| Customer protection | In-app grievance & language personalization | TAT reduction ≥ 30%; dispute reversals accuracy | Missing local-language coverage; dark patterns |
Gates — entry → testing → exit
- Entry: Problem statement, regulatory fit memo, data partner letters, security architecture, DPI alignment (UPI/AA/OCEN where relevant).
- Testing: Time-boxed pilots, success metrics (precision/recall, TATs), incident drills, opt-out pathways.
- Exit: Final report with evidence packs; production plan with sponsor, risk controls, and phased rollout.
Tip Arrive with anonymized datasets and an executing sponsor; the delta between deck and demo decides your slot.
How to choose your lane
If you’re a fintech
- Pick one metric to beat (e.g., collections TAT, fraud false-positives).
- Show model drift handling and rollback plans.
- Pre-consent templates and privacy nutrition labels in-app.
If you’re a bank/NBFC sponsor
- Demand kill-switch, audit-ready logs, and breach runbooks.
- Insist on unit-economics at scale: infra, compliance, and support costs.
- Plan BAU handover before greenlighting production.
Bank & fintech checklists
Security & privacy
- PII minimization; tokenization at ingress; role-based views.
- Immutable audit trails; quarterly DR drills with evidence.
Operations
- On-call rosters, MTTR targets, incident post-mortems with CAPA.
- Vendor exit & data return/destruction plans.
Compliance
- Consent artifacts mapped to every feature.
- Language/localization coverage; grievance TAT dashboards.
FAQ
- Can we run paid pilots? Yes if contracts are clear and sandbox boundaries aren’t breached.
- What kills applications? No bank sponsor, fuzzy security, and lack of measurable success metrics.