BBVA’s Turkish unit earned top honors in the Enterprise Transformation and Security & Fraud categories at the Finance Technology Awards hosted by IDC Turkey as part of the IDC Finance Summit 2019.

BBVA has achieved a critical milestone in its drive towards digital banking after passing the 50 percent mobile banking tipping point for customers. The news means more than half of BBVA’s active customers worldwide now engage with the bank via mobile devices, and through mobile channels like its world-leading mobile banking app.

Oscar Vélez de Mendizábal (Victoria, 1972), is the head of BBVA Spain’s business transformation factory. He’s previously held different positions in the business, institution and corporate areas of the Southern Territorial Division.

Global Finance magazine has recognized BBVA as the Best Foreign Exchange (FX) Provider in Latin America for the third year in a row. The 2019 World’s Best Foreign Exchange Providers awards were presented on November 19 in London. The publication also presented BBVA awards for the best FX services in its franchises in Peru, Argentina and Spain.

What were the hottest digital transformation trends in banking in 2019? Which ones should we keep an eye on in 2020? The banking sector’s interest in the latest developments in cyber security, computing or gamification grows day by day. For disciplines such as ‘pentesting’, quantum computing or development with the Unity engine, the future looks bright.

With the advent of big data, banks like BBVA are better able to harness the power of information to improve customer experience and provide advice, products and services – all personalized to your unique situation.

Business Insider today named BBVA USA as a leader in its Business Insider Intelligence 2019 Mobile Banking Competitive Edge study, the third year the financial and business news company has conducted the proprietary research and the second year BBVA has been evaluated.

Prosper, a leading online marketplace lending platform connecting borrowers and investors, together with the U.S. subsidiary of Madrid-based BBVA, announced their collaboration in providing a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) available through Prosper’s website (www.prosper.com).

BBVA CEO Onur Genç cited the bank’s collaboration with startups as a contributing factor to the bank’s hitting its growth and efficiency targets. He made his comments at Open Summit, where he presented the grand prize for this year’s international Open Talent competition to the winning startup, Cobee. The BBVA CEO also referred to the Group’s challenges, saying, “Our goal is to monetize the technological advances we’ve made from our investment in digital transformation.”

BBVA’s Turkish bank recently participated in the Mobile Market Association’s Impact Istanbul event. Executive Vice President Didem Dinçer Başer represented the bank at the conference, where she discussed the transformational role of mobile technology and mobile marketing in the finance sector.

Garanti BBVA recently launched an electronic platform known as Elektronik Teminat Mektubu Platformu, or ETMP, to provide customers letters of guarantee electronically. Provided by Kredi Kayıt Bürosu (KKB), Garanti BBVA customers who are KKB Findeks members get free access to the platform.

BBVA has again been named as one of the world’s leading financial institutions when it comes to open banking. The accolade comes as part of the Open Banking Report 2019, published by online banking experts The Paypers and Innopay. The authors of the report also interviewed BBVA’s Global Head of Open Banking, Carlos López Moctezuma, drawing on his insights to explain best practice in the sector around the core themes.

When Simple appointed David Hijirida as CEO in November 2018, the Amazon alum was excited to get back to his banking roots, the industry where he’d first cut his teeth.

BBVA CEO Onur Genç said on Monday that the bank is focused on organic growth, efficiency and transactionality, all leveraged by digitization. “We are focused on these three levers to ensure we provide the best value,” he said at the 10th Expansión-KPMG Financial Meeting in Madrid. He also recalled that “we have been pioneering the digital transformation.”

Garanti BBVA keeps its finger on the pulse of new technology, sponsoring the Second National Blockchain Workshop, organized by TÜBİTAK Bilgem, Turkey’s Informatics and Information Security Research Center.

With technology and digitization increasingly powering the global economy, the emergence of quantum computing could prove to be a significant catalyst for innovation and growth.

BBVA, in partnership with South Summit, has launched a request for proposals to solve two major challenges of the financial sector: improving digital onboarding processes and digital banking services for SMEs.

In February 2019, BBVA USA’s parent company disclosed in its earnings presentation that BBVA USA’s branch productivity increased by 40 percent over two years, making the regional bank one of the fastest growing in its segment.

Since SWIFT gpi was launched in 2017, BBVA has managed three million transactions – equivalent to €2 trillion – using this international payment standard. BBVA staunchly supports this global payment mechanism, which delivers speed and transparency to cross-border payments. Now SWIFT gpi aims to offer instant payments.

BBVA Net Cash USA Mobile was named a winner in the 2019 Bank Customer Experience (BCX) Awards, taking first place in the Best Mobile/Online Experience (financial institutions) category. BBVA USA was recognized for the award at the Bank Customer Experience Summit in Chicago in September, along with honorees who received awards in three other categories.

Large technology companies, or bigtech, have a large customer base, access to a massive volume of data and financial strength. While banks also have some of these attributes, it is the network effect technologies that companies benefit from that could ultimately undermine data-fueled innovation that is causing regulators and businesses alike concern. According to Santiago Fernández de Lis, the Head of Regulation at BBVA, if we want to ensure the continued growth, innovation and sustainability of the digital economy, we need to shift our approach to regulation from a national, sectoral approach to a truly cross-border and intersectoral approach.

We recently caught up with Open Platform’s CEO, Abhishek Gupta, to discuss the benefits of open banking, Banking-as-a-Service, and why they have the power to transform the delivery of services across a wide range of industries in the US. Following are the highlights from our conversation with him.

BBVA has a global program designed to create personalized, data-driven experiences to cater for the individual saving needs of its customers, either through recommendations, advice or proactive steps. After launching this kind of solution in Spain and Mexico, BBVA is now working to bring this program to the other countries in which it operates.

When it comes to 21st century banking, there is no shortage of terms bandied about that those in the industry are expected to know. Among the more obtuse are those related to banking’s next frontier, open banking.

The digital onboarding process based on biometric identification technologies, which is already available in Spain, will now reach other countries thanks to the reuse of globally designed components.

Gonzalo Rodriguez Rodriguez is the global head of Customer Solutions at BBVA – the business unit charged with building the future of consumer financial services for the bank. In this interview, Gonzalo outlines where he sees the future of banking heading, and how far along that path BBVA currently is.

Atom bank, the U.K.’s first bank built exclusively for mobile, has today been awarded a £10 million grant to boost genuine competition in lending to SMEs. Atom will use the grant to help transform banking for small businesses and deliver an additional £3 billion of business financing by March 2024. Atom will also create 70 jobs in the North East of England.

Digital transformation in the banking industry cannot be overstated. From mobile capabilities to digital check deposits to P2P platforms such as Venmo and PayPal, the wave of digital is washing ashore on every financial institution’s line-of-business. This constant shift can provide customers numerous options when managing their finances.

BBVA announced strong results last week when it published its 2Q 2019 report – much of which was underpinned by continuous strong performance in its digital transformation.

Atom bank, the UK’s first bank built exclusively for mobile and the UK’s most trusted bank on Trustpilot, has raised £50m in a fundraising round with participation from BBVA, Toscafund, Woodford Patient Capital Trust and funds advised by Perscitus LLP.

‘Schedule your account’ is the new digital service BBVA is offering its customers on the app (Android e iPhone). With this tool, customers can activate, and customize, six settings to automatically perform certain tasks to manage their personal finances. They simply have to choose the most convenient way to manage their account balance or save, include the parameters to take into account, and the operations take place automatically. Luz Martín Manjón, Head of Digital Products at BBVA Spain, explains how this new tool works.

If sending money is akin to a display of affection, people were showing their moms love in a big way on Mother’s Day, according to recently released results from international transfer services processor BBVA Transfer Services, or BTS.

For more than 20 years Garanti BBVA has been investing in technology in order to ensure a personalized and simplified digital experience in every new product or service it offers its customers and clients. In collaboration with Google, the bank recently launched a ‘Universal App Campaign,’ aiming to increase the number of interactions in the Garanti BBVA Mobile app and to encourage customers to use the bank’s digital channels for their banking transactions.

Consumers’ sensitive data is increasingly at risk as more businesses ask for personal information as a way to verify digital identity online. But what if there were a way to do that without the risk of compromising that information? Covault is leading a revolution to do just that.

BBVA was recognized in six different categories in the 2019 edition of the Euromoney Awards for Excellence. The bank won the award for the ‘World’s best bank for financial inclusion,’ ‘Western Europe’s best digital bank,’ ‘Latin America’s best bank for sustainable finance,’ ‘Latin America’s best bank for transaction services,’ ‘Mexico’s best investment bank,’ and ‘Best bank for corporate responsibility’ in Central and Eastern Europe.

The growth in usage in mobile banking across BBVA is continuing at pace, as new statistics from BBVA today show.

In the formal launch event of BBVA’s new global development center specializing in artificial intelligence, the leaders of the three areas that have worked together to create it – Data, Engineering and Client Solutions – shared with the team their vision and goals to materialize the impact of this technology across the organization.

Any company can fall victim to this kind of crime in which criminals trick an employee authorized to give bank payment orders into performing a transaction for them. Financial institutions like BBVA never request sensitive information, such as passwords or personal data, by email or outside of the secure environment on Net Cash and BBVA.es. For organizations, the key to preventing this kind of fraud is to reinforce control systems and  exercise great caution.

BBVA Executive Chairman Carlos Torres Vila has reiterated the importance of the bank operating globally if it is to meet its purpose of bringing the age of opportunity to everyone.

Data may have been the key buzzword at the Money 2020 Europe event in Amsterdam last week, but it was its constituent parts that were really vying for attention.

BBVA Group Executive Chairman Carlos Torres Vila underscored the Group’s strong commitment to Mexico today. Speaking at the bank’s annual Meeting of Regional Advisors, he noted that the Group has made considerable investments in the country, while sharing its expertise and talent, always focusing on the goal of creating opportunities for Mexican companies, families and its society as a whole. “Mexico has grown with BBVA, and BBVA has grown with Mexico,” he said.

After two years of fast growth, entrepreneurial banking specialist Azlo sets its sights on building a network-affect business community.

Money 2020 Europe is the biggest conference on the continent focused on the future of banking, money and financial services. Over the course of three days in Amsterdam, around 10,000 business leaders, entrepreneurs, start-ups, press and potential customers will be sharing and debating the trends likely to shape the future of the sector.

The company, in which BBVA invested in 2018, was named best startup in growth stage at the Fintech Germany awards.

An exceptional user experience and value added features are the keys to differentiating a banking application from its competition. These are the elements that held the most sway when, for the second consecutive year, the consulting firm Forrester chose BBVA’s app as the best banking app in the world and gave the Garanti BBVA app in Turkey the best in user experience.

In just three years from inception, German ‘startup’ solarisBank has become one of the hottest ‘fintech’ startups. BBVA has been backing the company since 2018.

Last week during the 2019 first quarter results presentation, BBVA CEO Onur Genç outlined some of the continued progress the bank has been making in its digital transformation.