These days, crypto is all the talk of town in Pakistani business circles, with the evangelists happy to finally have their long-held beliefs reiterated at the highest levels while the naysayers are dumbfounded by the entire saga. Though the packaging is new, it’s reflective of the broader problem in our policymaking ecosystem, which is marked by periods of absolute lull followed by everything happening at once, usually not in the most well-thought-out manner.

Luckily, the two regulators overseeing financial services, ie the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) and the State Bank (SBP), operate more professionally. Last week was a good reminder of this when the latter released its sandbox guidelines, an initiative that had been in the works for a couple of years, as the first draft came all the way back in December 2023.

This was a much-needed initiative from the central bank, as the SECP had launched its own sandbox more than five years ago and by now ran a number of cohorts. While the commercial uptake is yet to truly pick up momentum, it has allowed quite a few innovative businesses to experiment with novel business models such as peer-to-peer lending and real estate tokenisation, among others.

At its core, a regulatory sandbox is a controlled testing........

© Dawn Business