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The Bank of Lithuania actively fosters innovation via its award-winning Newcomer Programme (one-stop pre-application consultation), a regulatory sandbox (live-environment testing up to 6 months, extendable to 12), the LBChain blockchain sandbox, an AI sandbox, and open-banking promotion under PSD2. Lithuania was an early SCT Inst adopter and the ecosystem is layering newer controls (Verification of Payee, IBAN-name check) ahead of PSD3/PSR.
The Newcomer Programme and the sandbox infrastructure are a deliberate component of Lithuania's market-access advantage, underpinning the jurisdiction's attractiveness to new licensees ahead of the PSD3/PSR transition. They form part of the institutional offer that, alongside CENTROlink settlement access, explains why Lithuania accumulated the EU's largest non-bank payments population.
Outlook
The W9 trajectory is established. The innovation-facilitator suite is a settled standing position. The forward question is how these facilitators adapt to PSD3/PSR and to the maturing MiCA regime, and whether the early open-banking lead translates into a comparable position on the data-access and open-finance themes that the EU framework is expected to advance.
Product Innovation & Market Development
Checkout.com's acquisition of Blue EMI, a Bank-of-Lithuania-authorised issuer of euro-backed stablecoins for institutional use, together with the establishment of a Checkout.com Lithuania Technology Centre, signals a structural convergence between Lithuania's EMI licensing base and stablecoin product capability. This is a thematic product-access development distinct from a single commercial transaction: it reflects Lithuania's accumulated EMI licensing infrastructure being positioned by an international acquirer as a platform for stablecoin-adjacent product development specifically, rather than for conventional payment processing alone.
The product-innovation significance here rests on the combination of two previously distinct capabilities: Lithuania's deep bench of licensed EMIs, and a specific MiCA-authorised stablecoin issuer among them. An acquirer choosing to combine these by acquisition, rather than building stablecoin-issuance capability from scratch elsewhere, is a signal about the relative maturity and attractiveness of Lithuania's existing licensing infrastructure for this specific product category.
Watch for whether other international payments firms follow a similar acquisition-led entry pattern into Lithuania's EMI/stablecoin-issuer base, and whether Checkout.com's new Lithuania Technology Centre becomes a hub for further product launches in the jurisdiction.
1 earlier distinct update(s)
Product Innovation & Market Development
A Verification of Payee service was reportedly introduced within CENTROlink during 2025, positioned as part of the wider push under Lithuania's 2023-2028 Fintech Strategy toward account-to-account payment rails. This rests on a single Tier-4 trade-press source and has not been corroborated to a primary regulatory publication this cycle, so it is carried as an assessed, watch-status product development rather than a confirmed one.
Watch for primary-source confirmation of the Verification of Payee feature's scope and rollout status within CENTROlink, and for further product developments under the 2023-2028 Fintech Strategy's account-to-account rail push in subsequent cycles.
Sources and findings (4 unique sources · R-3/R-4)
The Bank of Lithuania's regulatory sandbox allows potential and existing financial market participants to test financial innovations in a live environment under its supervision, selecting participants on criteria of genuine innovation, consumer benefit and a justified need for live testing.
The Newcomer Programme helps potential market participants evaluate Lithuanian licensing and legislative requirements and is included in the 2023-2028 strategic action plan for fintech development; it won the 'Fintech Regtech Global Award 2023' from Central Banking.
- [W9-E3] T3 Derived: Probable in_forcehttps://www.govilnius.lt/investment-business/fintech- re-verified
Bank of Lithuania initiatives include LBChain, described as the world's first regulator-run blockchain sandbox, alongside the regulatory sandbox, Newcomer Programme and CENTROlink, supporting Vilnius's position as a large EU fintech hub serving 30 million-plus customers.
- [W9-E4] T3 Derived: Probable in_forcehttps://noda.live/articles/open-banking-in-lithuania re-verified
Lithuania was an early PSD2 adopter requiring banks to provide API access to third-party providers, with major banks (Swedbank, SEB, Luminor, Šiaulių Bankas, Citadele) supporting open banking, and the Bank of Lithuania has launched an AI sandbox for testing AI-driven fraud detection and compliance solutions.