Virtusa Corporation announced the successful implementation of the Middle East region’s first Open Banking Sandbox with Emirates NBD. The Open Innovation Platform, developed by Virtusa’s innovation hub, is a cloud-based sandbox environment that promotes a culture of collaboration and innovation by connecting financial institutions, FinTechs, corporates, educational institutions and technology startups. It helps financial institutions tap into the opportunities that leverage emerging technologies to solve real business problems. The platform will enable Emirates NBD to accelerate the pace of digitization and innovation by complementing the bank’s internal capabilities with emerging technologies. The Open Innovation Platform will provide Emirates NBD access to ready proof of concepts and help transform a concept into working prototypes. Additionally, the platform incorporates design thinking, lean start-up, and agile development principles, thus facilitating accelerated innovation with fewer resources. Virtusa’s Open Innovation Platform powers the Banking Industry Architecture Network’s (BIAN) digital API exchange to help banks drive faster open banking innovation and also powers the ASEAN Financial Innovation Network’s (AFIN) APIX platform – the world’s first cross-border, open architecture platform for Financial Institutions and FinTechs to collaborate and catalyze digital innovation while driving financial inclusion.