By Christine Mai

The EU Digital Finance Platform is here! This new website will give innovative financial firms, national and European Supervisors and others interested in digital finance a dedicated space to get together and shape a community. With the Platform, the European Commission hopes to encourage innovation and contribute to achieving a true single market in digital financial services.

Digital Finance Strategy

A key project set out in the Digital Finance Strategy of 2020 to complement legislative initiatives, the Platform is designed to provide a single entry point for digital finance in Europe, and help link innovative financial firms and supervisors across Member States.

Most innovative firms have a business model built on scaling up and expanding across the internal market. This is creating a new European digital finance ecosystem. In recent years, EU Member States and their supervisors have made significant progress when it comes to digital finance, strengthening innovation hubs and regulatory sandboxes (environments where fintechs can experiment with innovative financial services within a well-defined space or duration). EU supervisors share and exchange experiences in the European Forum for Innovation Facilitators, which was set up in 2019 by the European Supervisory Authorities. 

Visibility and support

The EU Digital Finance Platform, which has been created by the Commission in close collaboration with the European Supervisory Authorities, is designed to give more visibility to this developing European digital finance ecosystem and the related work of financial supervisors. It will also provide practical support to innovative financial firms expanding across Member States. The Platform is being set up in two steps: the first phase, only just launched at the end of March, focuses on an interactive Digital Finance Observatory and a Gateway providing access to national supervisors. The second phase, to be developed based on – among other things – user feedback, will provide additional features such as a data hub that could be used by market participants and supervisory authorities to test innovative products and applications.

European Fintech Map

In the first phase of the Platform, there are already plenty of opportunities for the website’s registered users to get involved. In fact, the Digital Finance Observatory will be built on users’ input. Innovative financial firms can, for example, literally put themselves ‘on the map’. They just need to enter information about themselves on the European Fintech Map, which will document the EU’s growing fintech community. Users can also promote events and calls to action, as well as share research, studies and other educational material. The Observatory is also a space for firms to learn about the latest policy and legislative developments and funding opportunities at EU level.

As for the Gateway to national supervisors, for the first time, market participants can find information about national innovation hubs and sandboxes, as well as national licensing requirements in one place. And the Platform offers features linked to the new procedural framework for cross-border testing that has been developed by the European Forum for Innovation Facilitators. These features include a standardised form interested firms can fill in.

Under this framework, firms seeking to scale up their activities across Europe can involve multiple national competent authorities in testing, either separately or at the same time. Many national supervisors have chosen to take part in cross-border testing, continuing to apply the respective national rules and practices. However, the Platform offers those supervisors involved in a specific testing process the opportunity to collaborate, share information and discuss if they decide to do so. In this way, cross-border testing not only supports innovative financial firms striving to grow, but also promotes supervisory cooperation and convergence.

The launch of the EU Digital Finance Platform will be officially marked with an online event on 8 April, to be opened by Mairead McGuinness, Commissioner for Financial Services, Financial Stability and Capital Markets Union. Verena Ross, Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority, will give the closing speech, and there will be a panel featuring high-level speakers representing industry and supervisors.

Read more and visit the EU Digital Finance Platform

Christine Mai is responsible for the Platform in the Digital Finance Team at the European Commission