The Financial Supervisory Commission of Taiwan (FSC) and the Office of Arizona Attorney General (AAG) signed a financial technology co-operation agreement which lays out rules for a referral mechanism, the sharing of information and the possibility of joint projects.

The agreement gives both regulators a set of rules by which they can refer start-ups from their jurisdictions to each other, help start-ups from one jurisdiction understand the regulatory regime of the other and share related information about their respective markets and innovations in financial services. The regulators hope that start-ups will now begin to deal with each other’s markets.

In March Arizona became the first state in the US to create a “regulatory sandbox” project for FinTech. The AAG is authorised to sign agreements with other regulatory agencies. The sandbox 'went live' in August and began accepting applications. It promises to reduce the regulatory entry barrier and allow start-ups to enter the Arizona financial market with limited authorisation. The agreement between the FSC and the AAG is the first such agreement reached since Arizona''s sandbox launched.

Taiwan claims to be the first country to pass a special law to provide experimental fields for FinTech startups - the Financial Technology Development and Innovative Experimentation Act 2017. The FinTech sandbox mechanism came into force on 30 April.
 
In March the FSC signed its first official co-operation agreement, with the Polish Financial Supervisory Authority or KNF. Following the Taiwan Financial Services Roundtable (TFSR) signed a memorandum of understanding on FinTech sector promotion and cooperation with the British Office Taipei in September this year. The FinTechSpace, the first FinTech-focused co-working hub in Taiwan, held its grand opening in September. A total of 37 innovation teams received approval in the first wave of recruitment, 6 of them international start-ups.