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Swan, Europe’s first public Sandbox for embedded banking

Swan’s Sandbox, which gives entrepreneurs and developers easy access to banking features, has been open to the EU public since November 2021.

Sarah Wachter & Pico Petershagen
November 5, 2021
Article written in 05/11/2021, updated 02/02/2022.

Are you thinking about building financial features into your product? Swan is the fastest, and easiest way to do it! Our Sandbox helps engineers and product managers to start building right away, without sales cales, NDAs, binding contracts or long wait times. You can go live with accounts, cards and payments in less than two weeks.

Such speed and agility gives you the chance to experiment and develop your solution confidently before fully committing with your time, money, and additional resources.

Swan prizes builders

"It's time to build." This now-iconic phrase was coined by Marc Andreessen during early Covid days, while the entire world was struggling more than it had in a long time. This notion resonates strongly here at Swan, where a Builders' mentality is a core value. Even more, it's a part of our mission: we aim to empower builders to build banking features into their product - without anything holding them back.

The right tools spur innovation

A proven way to unleash creativity is by giving people tools, the launch of AWS being an iconic example. Without AWS, launching a new software project started with a visit to the hardware shop to purchase servers (or you'd order the materials online and wait around for the delivery)...With AWS, the launch of a new software product starts in the middle of the night by anyone with a new idea.

Do you know what's far more tedious than going to a hardware shop? Building banking products into your software. Without external support, it can take years of time while burning through plenty of cash (trust us, we've been through it). Certainly, there are other existing solutions out there - but in our opinion, they aren't much better than visiting the metaphorical hardware shop. You still have to hire experts, schedule meetings, and wait for access provisioning...

Since our early days , our dream has been to remove all these barriers and create an AWS-esque moment for financial services. It's our entire "raison d'être" - to open up access to banking features. Well, now we've made it happen!

Are you building or want to build? Raising funds and need to demonstrate a compelling, market-ready product? Maybe you're thinking about embedding finance, but the whole idea just seems so theoretical and abstract and you have no idea where to begin.

Jump right in our Sandbox by clicking here and discover for yourself what your product would look like with banking features.

Meet Swan's Sandbox!

Create a working Proof of Concept in minutes ⏱

Once you're in the Sandbox, you can upload your company's logo, create accounts, issue cards, integrate webhooks, and simulate the reception of a transfer — all within just minutes. After that, you're completely autonomous to play with our Graph QL API and discover functionalities on your own (we launch new features every 3 weeks, all year round!), guiding yourself with our helpful documentation in hand. The event simulator lets you simulate everything: SEPA Credit Transfers, SEPA Direct Debits, SEPA Instant, cards transactions, and more:

Invite anyone you want to join you 🤝

Test your hypothesis from end to end, at your own pace, with your own people. You'll be able to create demo accounts with fake money that work just like in real life.

Don't pay a dime until you go live 😎

Testing and exploring in the Sandbox is free. You only pay once your integration is rock-solid and you choose to activate. Swan will perform a review, much like Apple does before publishing an app, to ensure everything is in line with regulations.

It's time to build

To get started, just click "Start now". You'll have to go through a simple identity verification process, and then you're in!

However, be aware we have to run a mandatory KYC (Know-Your-Customer) on everyone before they go live. As a regulated financial institution, we're obligated to know our partners and what they've built with Swan to make sure their project is not shady. Once you're past this verification, we make sure you can get started in just hours. You get 100% functional transparency right away.

Lastely, we don't believe there are limits for experimenting. In the Sandbox, no one can tell you "no" or hold you back. We give you the building blocks – you decide what to do with them.

Sarah Wachter & Pico Petershagen
November 5, 2021
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Elevate your company's product and create new revenue streams with banking features.
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