With the objective of increasing access to digital finance of local financial institutions, Alibaba Cloud and the Fintech Alliance (Philippines) collaborated to introduce the Fintech Industry Sandbox Program in the country. Alibaba Cloud is the digital technology and intelligence backbone of Alibaba Group while FinTech Alliance is an association of digital players in the digital finance sector.

The program will enable local businesses in the finance sector to explore the use of advanced cloud computing products and fintech services from Alibaba Cloud in a risk-free testing environment. This is in support of the Philippines’ digitalization initiatives by the country’s regulators: the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP).

Under the program, each eligible Philippine business will receive up to $10,000 in cloud coupons, which can be used to adopt Alibaba Cloud’s proven solutions, as well as access to complimentary cloud training, technical and industry expertise, and regulatory compliance guidance.

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“Alibaba Cloud and the FinTech Alliance are working hard to create a business-friendly environment for local fintech companies to deploy digital finance solutions tailored to their needs, and this program is an important step towards this goal,” said Allen Guo, country manager for the Philippines, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence.

Beginning this month, the program will be accepting applications from BSP-supervised financial institutions, that are registered with the SEC and meet eligibility criteria.

“We created this program with Alibaba Cloud to support emerging digital technologies, which help address current challenges in the financial industry,” said Lito Villanueva, founding chair of the FinTech Alliance.ph and chief innovation and inclusion officer and EVP of RCBC. “With more financial companies joining this program, we are glad to see the acceleration of access to inclusive digital finance in the country,”

Alibaba Cloud is one of the founding members of the FinTech Alliance.ph, offering its expertise in cloud technology and providing solutions around elastic compute, database, security, storage, and network services. It is also developing machine learning and data analytics capabilities to address challenges and unlock opportunities for companies across the fintech space.