Digital banking

With the aim of facilitating access to banking services, BBVA adapted its app in Spain for children at the end of 2022, allowing them to use functions such as mobile payments, Bizum and online purchases under parental supervision. Interested parents can open an account for their children between the ages of 0 to 17 directly on the app or at a branch. Since its launch, over 250,000 minors have signed up in Spain.

BBVA’s strategy in Spain of targeting companies and SMEs has scooped three awards from Global Finance magazine at this year’s edition of its ‘Best Digital Bank Awards’: Most Innovative Bank, Best Mobile Banking App and Best Open Banking Strategy.

Garanti BBVA continues to make life easier for its customers with Garanti BBVA Mobile: with more than 15.5 million active users, it is the most widely used private-sector banking app in Türkiye. App usage has risen fivefold over the past five years, and in the first half of 2024 topped 2.7 billion logins, making for a monthly average of 450 million visits, while completed transactions increased by 25 percent to almost 800 million.

This Wednesday, BBVA Spain Country Manager Peio Belausteguigoitia underscored that Spain is meeting its growth targets, including adding 3.6 million new customers in Spain and boosting its main lines of business, such as the corporate banking segment. His presentation took place at a summer course held at the Menéndez Pelayo International  University, and was organized by the financial press association APIE and BBVA. BBVA also had a strong performance in Italy, where the bank has now reached 500,000 customers. The success of this digital banking model has led BBVA to consider expanding to other countries in Europe, with the focus currently on Germany.

Garanti BBVA Digital Asset’s crypto app, ‘Garanti BBVA Crypto’ was recently presented the award for ‘Pioneers of Digital Finance’ by KPMG Turkey and the Financial Innovation and Technology Association (FINTR).

Garanti BBVA continues to make its clients' lives easier with its digital products and services. The bank’s commercial banking clients are now able to apply for credit limits for loans online - without having to set foot in a  branch thanks to Garanti BBVA's "Commercial Credit Limit Application".

Following the efforts made by the Interbank Card Center (BKM) in Türkiye to simplify payments among individual and self-employed customers, Garanti BBVA has now launched the ‘Request Payment’ feature via its mobile and online banking services.

BBVA Italy has now surpassed 240,000 customers since its launch in October 2021. The bank's strategy, based on a range of fee-free products for customers' day-to-day business (account and card) and financing and savings products at very competitive prices, is yielding results. These figures confirm that the bank is on track to achieve its year-end target of 320,000 customers.

BBVA’s Turkish franchise is strategically reinforcing its commitment to enhance customer accessibility by extending remote banking services to corporate clients.

Speaking at the 13th Expansión KPMG Financial Forum, José Luis Elechiguerra, Global Head of Engineering at BBVA, said that "digitization and innovation are key factors in BBVA's profitable growth strategy."

The bank’s Deputy General Manager Işıl Akdemir Evlioğlu recently spoke with the Turkish edition of Fortune magazine to discuss Garanti BBVA's winning digital banking proposition.

The Banker magazine, owned by the UK-based Financial Times group, has honored BBVA as Spain’s best-performing and fastest-growing bank. In addition, BBVA is Mexico's leading bank by capital adequacy and ranks among the 'Top 5' in Türkiye, Colombia and Peru. To compile its league table of leading banks, The Banker examines 30 indicators using its own in-house method.

BBVA's country manager in Spain, Peio Belausteguigoitia, spoke on Wednesday to underscore the bank's excellent performance in Spain, driven by a strategy of healthy organic growth via customer acquisition and strong progress in almost all line items of the income statement. Speaking at the UIMP summer course hosted by the APIE and BBVA, Mr. Belausteguigoitia stressed that one out of every five customers who open an account for the first time or decide to switch banks chooses BBVA. As a result, the bank ended 2022 with a record intake of new customers, while the figure for the first five months of this year is already close to 500,000.

BBVA, the Comillas Pontifical University and the technology consultancy NTT DATA have unveiled Spain’s first master's degree in fintech, payments and online banking. The master's degree offers comprehensive, specialized, practical and advanced training in financial technologies with the aim of equipping future professionals with the skills to transform and lead the payments and online banking industries.

Garanti BBVA Mobile, Türkiye's most widely used banking application, maintains its leadership among private banks for the services it provides to individual customers and corporate clients.

After just a year and a half of landing in the country with a free, 100% online service, BBVA has positioned itself among the top five financial institutions in the country, according to the annual ranking World’s Best Banks by Forbes and Statista. Specifically, BBVA ranks as the fourth best bank in Italy, ahead of many traditional and native banks in the country. Digital services and customer support were the most highly rated criteria among respondents. BBVA also ranked among the best banks in Spain and Mexico.

BBVA offers parents the opportunity to use the bank's website or smartphone app to open a commission-free account for their kids as soon as they are born.

BBVA acquired more than one million customers in 2022 in Spain, of which just over half -521,802- were through digital channels (web or mobile). This figure represented an increase in BBVA's digital customer acquisition of 13.21 percent compared to 2021, with mobile, with 71.5 percent of total digital acquisition, being the most used channel. For 2023, the bank will continue to promote its digital recruitment strategy through different campaigns focused on rewarding customer loyalty, such as the 'Invite a Friend Plan', among others. For this year, the entity has set itself the goal of revalidating the figures of 2022 and acquiring another half a million digital customers in Spain.

BBVA's CEO, Onur Genç, said Monday that he is very satisfied with the performance of the digital bank's business and customer acquisition in Italy, one year after its launch. “We expect to end the year with 160,000 customers, almost triple the initial forecasts,” he said during his presentation at the XIII Encuentro Financiero Expansión KPMG.

BBVA has explored the potential of blockchain technology as a major catalyst to create value in finance 2.0 for the past six years and is confident of its ability to build a more advanced society in economic and social terms. Alfonso Gómez, CEO of BBVA Switzerland,  spoke recently at the Fifth Blockchain and Digital Asset Forum hosted by online publication El Confidencial and sponsored by Grant Thornton, Allfunds, Criptan and Metrovacesa. Alfonso explained the key points of digital assets, discussed the role and responsibilities of traditional banks in this new space, and pointed out the opportunities that are now emerging.

You can watch the event delayed here.

BBVA New Gen, the investment product offered by the Group’s Swiss franchise, has completed its first year of existence. In a move to streamline the onboarding process, the bank now lets prospective customers sign up online just by uploading a ‘selfie’, after which their identity is verified in a matter of seconds. BBVA Switzerland is leveraging this technology, which can verify identity documents and passports from more than 190 countries, to boost its international expansion.

The southern Swiss city of Lugano has stepped up cryptocurrency use and is developing new infrastructure to adopt Bitcoin, Tether and its own LVGA token as legal tender. In the coming months, Lugano residents will be able to use cryptocurrencies to pay their taxes and make purchases at more than 200 local businesses.

World Finance, one of the world's leading business and finance magazines, named Garanti BBVA ‘Türkiye's Best Retail Bank’ for the eighth consecutive time. The Turkish franchise was also singled out as ‘Europe's Best Retail Bank’ for the fifth time.

BBVA is the winner in four categories of the 2022 Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The bank is 'Western Europe’s Best Digital Bank,’ 'Latin America’s Best Bank for Corporate Responsibility,’ 'Mexico’s Best Bank' and 'Mexico’s Best Investment Bank.'

Joy Macknight, editor of The Banker, spoke with Alfonso Gómez, the CEO of BBVA Switzerland, to discuss the details of the bank’s cryptocurrency trading and custody service. BBVA Switzerland is the first traditional bank in Europe, and one of the first in the world to offer a service of this kind.

BBVA has launched a new card in Spain as part of its Aqua range - characterized by offering a dynamic CVV for each purchase and no printed number - that combines maximum security with the possibility of paying in installments for up to three months, with no interest or deferral fees. As a result, BBVA is breaking into the new ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ (BNPL) payment method with a product that helps its customers to make their payments in a convenient and flexible way.

Victoria del Castillo Marchese has been the Head of Strategy and M&A at BBVA since December 2018. Prior to this, she held a variety of different roles at the bank, where she began working in 2001. She was recently interviewed by the media outlet Capital & Corporate, where she recalled that “one of BBVA’s priorities is profitable growth” in places where the bank has a presence, such as Spain, Mexico, Turkey and South America. She also emphasized the value of the digital means of expanding the bank’s activity in other countries: “Digitization allows us to enter new markets,” she said.

BBVA’s Turkish unit consolidates its lead in innovative digital payment solutions by adding a new dimension to card transactions with digital receipts, a first in the Turkish banking sector.

BBVA has set a huge digital challenge for itself: to go one step further in the banking services it provides and offer personalized suggestions that improve its customers’  financial health. To do so, it uses data science to identify the characteristics that define them (always with their prior consent) and therefore offer suggestions on how to manage their everyday finances, lower their debt, save or plan for the future.