Answering this question is not easy. Academics and financial industry representatives met to discuss whether it would be appropriate for central banks to issue digital currencies. In the forum, BBVA executive board member, José Manuel González-Páramo, indicated that he believes it is probable that central banks will issue cryptocurrencies in the years ahead.  Future advances in blockchain technology will open the way to its use by financial authorities.

A major superstore chain is making waves in the world of fintech news this week, lending to some interesting developments for an Oakland-based startup.

The word “gig” comes from musical jargon and refers to a performance by a musical group. When applied to the working world, the concept refers to sporadic jobs of limited duration. The person hired to do the job is responsible for fulfilling a specific role within a project.

Where do most internet users go online from? What devices do they use? How often do they upgrade their smartphones? This a snapshot of the current internet and smartphone use habits across the planet.

Can Big Tech take the place of banks in the financial services sector? According to Francisco González in his op-ed article in today’s edition of Financial Times, while the Big Tech’s threat is widely known, digitization opportunities for some banking institutions are less evident. BBVA Group Executive Chairman is confident that “we have what it takes to redesign banking and to bring about the next stage of this industry’s evolution.”

Consensus, the Coindesk conference held a week ago in New York, once again showed expectations generated by blockchain and cryptoassets are at their height. More than 8,400 professionals and investors attended the event, which last year had 2,200 visitors.

Data is often cited as being the new oil when it comes to the question of what is the world’s most valuable resource.

A little more than two years after its approval by the European Parliament, the new European Regulation on Data Protection or GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) will go into effect on May 25, 2018. It is not just another regulatory change: it is the most important change to European data regulation in 20 years and involves new rights for consumers, such as the right to be forgotten and the right to data portability. It also strengthens the concept of consent.

The creation of a Single European Market without borders or customs duties is considered one of the greatest achievements of the European Union. The common market is now 25 years old and finds itself at a moment of crucial change in which digital disruption requires new products and services to be regulated.

BeCoN is an acronym coined by PwC researchers to refer collectively to the three new forms of capital – behavior capital, cognitive capital and network capital – that they say in a report entitled ‘The Bionic Company’ are becoming increasingly crucial in the current economy.

BBVA backed Garanti Bank, in cooperation with Turkish Central Bank and TUBITAK, the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey, has sponsored the first Blockchain Workshop in Turkey.

The BBVA Center for Financial Education and Capability has launched the first ‘Call for Expressions of Interest,’ an initiative aimed at fostering academic research in financial education and inclusion. This first edition will focus on six areas that address different global issues from diverse perspectives.

Over 300 businessmen Monday took part in a meeting in Bilbao of the Business 20 (B20) –a corporate forum of the G20. The companies present at the meeting are at the vanguard of digitalization and industry 4.0. At the start of the event, José Manuel González-Páramo, BBVA Executive Board member and vice president of one of the B20 task forces, called for “greater cooperation between the public and private sectors” to meet the challenges posed by the new digital economy.

BBVA’s drive towards delivering a world class digital banking experience has taken another step forward. Over the past year the bank has seen an almost twofold year on year increase in the number of products and services its customers and clients are taking-up via digital channels.

The “proptech” companies and the most innovative financial institutions are already offering services that improve the customer experience in the real estate sector.

Since it was launched in 2016, the FCA’s regulatory sandbox has supported 60 firms to test their innovation with real customers in the live market under controlled conditions. Now, it is assessing different options to scale up the model at global level to solve the challenges of operating internationally in the fintech market.

The head of the BBVA Data & Analytics’ Edge team, José Antonio Rodríguez-Serrano, who coordinates the innovation area in BBVA’s center of excellence in data science, shares his insights into five key questions to understand the implications of this exponential technology in different economical sectors and spheres of society.

‘Blockchain’ is still at level 0 in the video game industry, but it has a promising future.

As we have seen in previous articles, the intelligent use of data, with the right talent and the pertinent business strategies for applying creative solutions, can provide insights that help solve a whole gamut of problems and take on board new opportunities. Data places within our grasp an enhanced decision-making ability and a deeper understanding of our clients and what they need. But as in the case of any other tool, these new skills can be put to positive or not so positive use, whether intentionally or not.

The use of virtual assistants, mainly in the form of smart speakers, is rapidly gaining ground. In less than a year, devices such as Echo and Google Home have appeared in households across the globe and users are becoming increasingly comfortable carrying out searches, purchases and even bank transactions using this format, which looks set to become the transactional interface between customers and companies.

We inferred as much in the title to the first article of this series: to key to realizing all the opportunities of this new technological era, lies in these three factors: raw material—data—and the other two are human factors—intelligence and innovation.

Concepts such as big data, machine learning, artificial intelligence and data science are increasingly at the center of the debate about the digital revolution. But why is everyone talking about them? Do we really understand these concepts, or the implications they have on our evolution as a society?

E-everything: Big tech companies now offer BaaS (Blockchain as a Service)—a way to access blockchain technology without incurring huge costs.

At BBVA, new digital solutions for customers are constantly being developed. The bank´s affiliates in Mexico, Peru and Chile are launching new tools for personal finance, implementing the use of the digital signature for contracting loans, and adding new functions to their cell phone apps.

Technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain and APIs continue to dominate the forecasts of the leading experts in the fintech sector. However, there are some new caveats for 2018, due to regulatory pressure. As the digitization of financial services gathers force, BBVA stands among the banks that have invested most in their digital transformation.

The BBVA Foundation´s Frontiers of Knowledge Award was won by four mathematicians – Shafi Goldwasser, Silvio Micali, Ronald Rivest and Adi Shamir – for their outstanding contributions to cryptology, a science that has proven crucial to ensuring security in the online world.

The year 2018 looks to be a crucial one for the entire blockchain ecosystem and distributed ledger technologies (DLT). Beyond the speculative rage that cryptocurrencies have ignited, this year is expected to bring a certain maturity to the market. Here are seven predictions from three BBVA experts regarding the challenges of the new decentralized economy, featured in the specialized news website Criptonoticias.

Every day, new applications and software are making our devices more efficient and our society better connected. But if you want to step back and take a wider view of the digital economy and its impact on all aspects of society, these eleven books, all published in recent months, can prove both entertaining and useful.

The new technologies, and their presence in everyday life, are radically changing the way we look at entertainment, social relationships and work. They have also created new professions that do not yet have a set educational pathway, such as videogame developer.

The strategic commitment of the most dynamic banks to digitization is played out in several areas: the competition for talent, new technologies, the creation of their own fintech companies, agreements with startups, etc. The success of this strategy, which aims to improve customer experience, cannot be measured in the short term.

In the era of the digital economy, it’s crucial that entrepreneurs acquire the financial knowledge and skills needed to develop innovative projects with long term sustainability. That´s why the focus on education, and in particular financial education, should be widened to include entrepreneurship, especially among young people.

Carlos Torres Vila, BBVA’s Chief Executive Officer, this morning said open innovation is one of the key elements of the bank´s transformation to adapt financial services to customers’ new needs. “Keeping up with the rapid pace of change that companies are undergoing, including the financial services sector, the connection with the innovation ecosystem and entrepreneurs is essential,” he said.

The most impressive thing at this year’s Blockchain Summit in London was the enthusiasm and wide array of use cases for blockchain on show. Starting with its origins of digital currency and current evolution to ICOs (the abbreviation for initial coin offering) to applications in the energy and real estate sectors, there is seemingly no problem too big that it can’t be solved via blockchain technology.

BBVA, in collaboration with Wave, conducted the first pilot that uses blockchain to automate the electronic submission of documents in an import-export transaction between Europe and Latin America.  Thanks to Wave’s solution, which uses Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) and blockchain, BBVA was able to reduce the time required to send, verify and authorize an international trade transaction, which normally takes from seven to ten days, to just 2.5 hours.

A review of the year’s big winners in the fintech universe reveals China’s growing role in the world’s digital economy.

Car sharing and driverless cars are shaking the very foundations of the automobile industry. Will technology make car ownership obsolete?

Big Data Spain brought together more than 1,200 specialists in data analysis and science in Madrid for two days, during which it was made clear how this technology can bring a new dimension to any area: from marketing to user experience to economic and geopolitical analysis.

Money 20/20 Las Vegas is without doubt one of the showcase events for technology and financial services in the world. Every years thousands of people involved in the industry, from big banks like BBVA to technology firms like Google and most importantly innovators and start-ups, gather to discuss the future of the industry.

These new technological tools have the potential to improve all kinds of economic exchanges and open the door to new ways of doing business that today are unimaginable.

BBVA has revealed how a redesign of its award winning mobile app has led to astonishing results in its sales figures.

In a few years, we may not be paying with cash, cards or even with smartphones, but rather, by car. Vehicle connectivity will change the way we manage time and money, but a number of problems still need to be addressed.

Digitization is primarily an English term. According to a report, the U.S. and U.K. are the countries whose economies are the most prepared for a fourth industrial revolution.

Esri, a global leader in Geographic Information Systems and BBVA API Market, have rolled out a collaboration project to embed BBVA’s ‘API PayStats’ in Esri’s platform. The aim is to enable companies and public institutions to make business decisions based on customers’ actual commercial behavior.

For the banking industry, the digital revolution has brought new technologies and new types of customers and competitors. But it has also created a new set of ethical responsibilities regarding cybersecurity and the use of data. José Manuel González-Páramo, BBVA’s Executive Director, talked about those ethics, and the opportunities and challenges of digitization, during a speech at the Atrium of the Gentiles, a cultural dialogue organized by the engineering school ICADE and the Ecumenical Social Forum of Madrid. He said these ethics will require acting from a triple perspective: educational, business and regulatory

Big data is much more than a trend that´s being studied in the innovation departments of cutting-edge companies. Some multinationals have already changed forever, thanks to the strategic use of data.

The objective is not an easy one to achieve: making sure that the products that reach the market are the ones customers need and demand. The task is even more complicated if production must be speeded up, in order to reach the market before the competition. Tech companies were pioneers in facing this challenge; they did so by using agile methods, a way of working that has played a key role in the success of companies like Google and Spotify, and which BBVA has made a fundamental tool in accelerating its digital transformation.

The main Spanish banking, energy and telecommunications companies, among other sectors, have established Alastria, the world’s first regulated national network based on blockchain. This non-profit consortium will develop the Ditributed Ledger Technology (DTL), which is set to become the new data exchange ecosystem and which will enable and accelerate the digital transformation of different industrial and business sectors in the coming years thanks to its agility, veracity, security and efficiency.

This year’s event, which will be held in Toronto, will be attended by Alicia Pertusa, BBVA’s Head of Digital Transformation, CIB, and BBVA’s Head of Securities Services Alexis Thomson, who will share insights into the integration of blockchain in financial services and the challenges and opportunities brought on by this exponential technology.

One of the world’s most respected publications, The Economist, has written up an article on BBVA entitled “BBVA, A Spanish Bank, Reinvents itself as a Digital Business’. The focus of the piece is on the steps BBVA is taking to transform itself into the bank of the future, and the reasons for doing this.

Sex, religion, and politics, along with harmony and trust, gave birth to money. At first, there was barter. Later came coins and bills, which have now given way to the network age, a world in which space and time have disappeared and transactions are conducted in bits. In order to understand the present and predict the future, Chris Skinner reflects on the history of money in his book, ‘The Next Step: Exponential Life’, which can be downloaded online free of charge as part of BBVA’s OpenMind project.