The European Union (EU) has launched its new Digital Finance Platform.

The new platform is designed to support financial innovation and digital technologies in the European Union.

It is a joint initiative between the European Commission, ESAs, and national competent authorities.

The platform was launched at an event, where chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) Verena Ross explained that it will primarily support the cross-border activities of “national financial facilitators in their engagements with innovative FinTechs in Europe”.

She said that national innovation facilitators include hubs, sandboxes, and accelerators with a common aim to make regulation and supervision support innovation.

According to Ross, the new platform will bring together a “wealth of information”, with data and communications in one place to help support firms and regulators and build links between financial authorities and the industry.

The platform currently supports a number of functionalities, including the European Fintech Map, Sharing Knowledge and Policy Corner. It provides a single access point for all the information related to facilitating financial innovation in Europe. It will also enable the functionalities related to cross-border testing.

“But the ambition for the Platform is greater than this,” explained Ross. “In phase 2 the Platform will host a Data Hub to be used by the industry and supervisory authorities to enhance their toolkit and their capacities in testing innovations.”

The ESMA chair also said that the new platform will “complement and enhance” the European Forum of Innovation Facilitators (EFIF) by supporting cross-border activities of the national innovation facilitators.

The EFIF was created to promote greater coordination and cooperation between national innovation facilitators and the EU-level authorities and with that support the scaling up of FinTech across the single market.

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