Financial Innovation Lab Value for your institution

Why the Lab matters

Value for your
institution

Bring a question about money and machines, and leave with a measured answer — on real hardware, against a real-format financial ecosystem, with real people.

The Lab is four experimental areas, standing and working today. Intelligent Machines: real ATM/ITM hardware, enhanced with artificial intelligence and wired for experimentation. The Virtual Financial Ecosystem: a digital twin of the country’s banks, rails, networks and supervisors, speaking real formats — published and open, so it runs in your browser with no key and nothing to install. The Open Sandbox: where products connect, integrate and are shown. And the Living Lab: where all of it meets real people, with their consent. Ready for 2027, today.

  • Intelligent Machines
  • Virtual Financial Ecosystem
  • Open Sandbox
  • Living Lab
  • 5+advanced ATM/ITM machines on the floor, wired for experimentation
  • 190+executable rules in the simulation, each one citing its article
  • 40+AI agents, tools and connectors live in the Open Sandbox
What you gain Back to the Lab

What you gain

Twelve counterparties, twelve different interests. Find yours: what you gain, what you can do today, and where to start.

Banks and financial institutions

For the institution that has to be ready before the rail goes live.

  • What you gainA sponsored node in the simulation, carrying a Lab name and behaving like your kind of institution; a private lane where your vendors and fintechs arrive already tested; SGPI readiness runs against the simulated instant-payment system while the real one is still being built; and AML tooling exercised with instrumented evidence.
  • What you can do todayRun onboarding, a transfer, a card authorization, a compliance filing and a settlement cycle end to end against simulated counterparties — no real customers, no real money, an instrumented file at the end. It is evidence, never certification or regulatory compliance.
  • Where to start Enter the simulation and look at the node map: financialecosystem.io · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Electronic-payment entities, fintechs and sub-acquirers

For the team whose product has to survive a real counterparty.

  • What you gainA team key and a world of your own — your seed, your clock, your ledgers, your reports, deterministic and resettable — with both of your regulatory figures modelled and connected: the electronic-payment entity and the sub-acquirer, from merchant affiliation to clearing, settlement and the chargeback cycle.
  • What you can do todayRun the whole product end to end and break it where breaking is cheap: authorization, reversal, dispute, settlement, the compliance chain. Then take the file to a bank, an acquirer or the Annual Championship.
  • Where to start See the simulation, then ask for a team key: financialecosystem.io · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Card schemes and acquirers

For everyone who lives on the authorization message.

  • What you gainA card-scheme node of your own — authorization, clearing, settlement, tokenization, 3-D Secure outcomes — a private lane for your vendors and acquirers, and the ISO 8583 wire: every card message already carries its ISO 8583 projection, decline codes included.
  • What you can do todayExercise an acquirer, a processor or a terminal integration against a counterparty that answers correctly, and against one that answers badly on purpose.
  • Where to start See the wire and the message contracts: financialecosystem.io · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Telecommunications operators

For the operator whose network is already a financial rail.

  • What you gainA telecom node in your name and a private lane where the fintechs that want to reach your customers arrive pre-tested; top-ups, wallets and agents exercised end to end; the mobile number tested as a payment alias; and a named challenge at the Annual Championship whose solutions and teams you keep.
  • What you can do todayTest a top-up, an alias lookup and an assisted cash-in on real machines, with people who have never used them.
  • Where to start Ask for a floor visit and a working session: talk to the team · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Insurers

For the industry that sells a promise nobody can see.

  • What you gainThe insurance lane inside the simulation — quote, contract, collect the premium by direct debit or card, claim, disburse, and insurance embedded over a loan or a transfer — plus the Living Lab to find out what a policy looks like to someone buying their first one.
  • What you can do todayRun a micro-insurance flow at a terminal and measure where people stop reading, stop understanding and walk away.
  • Where to start Ask for the insurance lane: talk to the team · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Regulators and supervisors

For the authority that has to write a rule before the market has one.

  • What you gainA supervisory seat that is already built and enforced — read-only across every world, every trace, every run report and every rule verdict, operating nothing — a way to rehearse a draft rule, a standard or a threshold against the systems it will govern, and a published list of the open assumptions the simulation is asking you about.
  • What you can do todayRun your own scenarios — a high-volume day, a tight settlement window, a participant failure — and see what a rule actually produces in traces, reports and exceptions, before anyone is obliged to comply.
  • Where to start Ask for a briefing and a seat: talk to the team · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Universities, faculty and students

For the department that needs the instrument it does not have.

  • What you gainFinLab Fellows residencies with findings that publish; internships that earn the supervised practice hours your programmes require, with a CEMI certificate for recognition under your own rules; an academic seat with a world of its own, deterministic and reproducible on a reviewer’s request; and learning programmes built with your faculty.
  • What you can do todaySend a research question, a thesis with an empirical component, or a group of students who need a real floor. The simulation’s published open assumptions are thesis topics from day one.
  • Where to start Read the residency programme: FinLab Fellows · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Development banks and cooperation agencies

For the funder who has to show the result travelled.

  • What you gainA replicable blueprint — change the actor catalogue and the rule catalogue and the country changes with them — inclusion evidence rather than inclusion rhetoric, with detection scored against negative controls, and a floor that receives delegations and shows the mechanics instead of the slides.
  • What you can do todayBring a delegation, a portfolio project that needs a testing environment, or a programme that needs measurement designed with its participants rather than on them. The door is open to startups from across the region, not only Dominican ones.
  • Where to start Ask for the replication dossier: talk to the team · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Technology companies

For the platform that wants to be where the work happens.

  • What you gainIntegration with your platforms in the Open Sandbox, real financial workloads to be measured on rather than a benchmark, a named challenge at the Annual Championship, and a showcase where partners, banks and supervisors watch the integration work on a machine.
  • What you can do todayBring a platform, an API, a device or a model to the Sandbox and connect it to the rest of the stack. Every path is a possible integration to be agreed, not a claim about what is already deployed.
  • Where to start Ask about integration with your platforms: talk to the team · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Investors and the country brand

For whoever is asked what this country exports next.

  • What you gainAn exportable product — a financial-ecosystem simulation and a lab design another market can stand up by swapping two catalogues — companies that arrive abroad already tested, with an instrumented report that names the scenarios, the seed, the catalogue version and the verdict per rule, and a visit destination for trade missions, delegations and specialised press.
  • What you can do todayOpen the public simulation in a browser and let the live map draw itself. The conversation starts with something open in front of you, not a slide.
  • Where to start Ask for the investment briefing: talk to the team · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Chambers, associations, free zones and parks

For the organization whose value is what its members get.

  • What you gainYour members’ merchants and products tested before deployment instead of after, free of service fees; a talent pipeline out of the internships and the residencies; joint programmes and challenges you co-organize; and the Lab as an anchor and a showcase you can bring your own members and their customers to.
  • What you can do todayBring a member with a payment problem, a cohort to a floor session, or a member team that needs a key in the simulation. There is a draft collaboration agreement ready to discuss.
  • Where to start Ask for a members’ session: talk to the team · or write to partners@cemi.ai

Consumers and the public

For the person the system was not designed for.

  • What you gainFinancial inclusion worked as an engineering problem — assisted flows, low-literacy interfaces, cash-in and cash-out for people the system was not built around; free financial-education programmes, from financial health to finance for women and the calculators; privacy and data protection treated as a design constraint rather than a disclaimer; and a simulation published in the open so anyone can see how the money actually moves.
  • What you can do todayTry the public ATM demo, join a financial-education programme, or simply open the simulation — it needs no key and nothing to install.
  • Where to start Look at the ecosystem yourself: financialecosystem.io · or write to partners@cemi.ai

How we work with you

The Lab is standing and working. We do not write asking anyone to hold it up: what we ask for is participation — a seat at the table, a node in the simulation, a key in your team’s hands, or a programme run together.

Every form of taking part is built so that your own institution takes something out of it: a rehearsal, an instrumented file, a talent pipeline, a finding. If it only served the Lab, it would not be on this page.

A seat

A place in what the Lab works on next, and — for authorities and universities — a supervisory or academic seat that already exists in the simulation: read-only, operating nothing. A seat is not an agreement.

A node

Your kind of institution represented in the Virtual Financial Ecosystem, speaking real formats, so everyone else’s tests have a counterparty that behaves like you. The node always carries a Lab name, never yours.

A key

Access for your team to a world of its own: your seed, your clock, your ledgers, your reports — deterministic, resettable, and verifiably isolated from every other team’s.

A programme

Something run together: a private pilot, a cohort, an internship, a residency, a Living Lab study, or a named challenge at the Annual Championship.

Access to the experimental areas, to the simulation and to the open programmes carries no service fee, and the public simulation needs no key at all. A limited cost-recovery tariff applies only where a real expense exists — materials, third-party machine time, dedicated instrumentation, an extended private pilot — and it is agreed in writing before anything starts. The Lab runs on simulated data and consenting participants; nothing in the simulation is real, every simulated institution carries a Lab name, and no run is certification, endorsement or regulatory compliance. The Virtual Financial Ecosystem is not an «ambiente de prueba» under Article 83 of the Reglamento de Sistemas de Pago and never substitutes for any regulator’s authorization.

Where to go from here

Four doors. A visit to the floor is worth more than any deck — the machines argue for themselves.

Enter the ecosystem The simulation itself, open in your browser — the nodes, the rails and the rules, with no key and nothing to install. Watch the guided tour A whole process running end to end, narrated, in three languages. FinLab Fellows The residency programme: a question, a supervisor, real machines, findings that publish. Talk to the team A floor visit, a seat, a node, a key, a programme — or a thirty-minute conversation about which of them fits.

Partnerships, seats and nodes: partners@cemi.ai