The European Central Bank on Thursday announced it is maintaining its monetary policy unchanged. Interest rates will remain at current levels until the summer of 2019 or “as long as necessary”, as announced in its June meeting. In doing so, ECB President Mario Draghi gave no further clarification on the next steps in the bank’s roadmap and intoned the mantra of prudence and patience.

BBVA today released its second quarter 2018 financial results. What were the key figures? To begin with, the bank is close to meeting its goal of having 50 percent of its total customer base made up of digital customers. Customer digitization drives sales through digital channels, propels total sales and improves efficiency. BBVA CEO Carlos Torres Vila said,  “We were off to a very good start of 2018 last quarter, and this quarter we’ve managed to achieve some excellent results.”

• Transformation: At the end of June, BBVA’s digital customer base stood at 25.1 million (+26 percent yoy). Of these, 20.7 million were mobile customers (+43 percent yoy). Digital sales increased in H1-18 and now account for 39 percent of total sales. All this contributed to strengthen recurring banking revenues and to keep efficiency at 49.2 percent
• Income: Solid trends in recurring revenues and cost containment efforts drove operating income growth in the first six months of 2018 (+6.8 percent in constant terms). Profitability has also improved significantly. ROE stood at 11.7 percent, while ROTE was 14.3 percent
• Risks: Risk indicators continued to perform robustly. At the end of June, the NPL ratio stood at 4.4 percent, with coverage of 71 percent
• Capital: A pro-forma fully-loaded CET ratio of 11.40 percent was reached in June. It includes the sale of BBVA Chile (finalized in July) and the Cerberus agreement to reduce its exposure to the real estate business. The tangible book value per share grew in the quarter

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.

At the bottom of every check you write and every check you cash or deposit, you’ll find a long string of numbers: nine digits, then a colon followed by eight more digits, one more colon and another four digits. But what do those 21 numbers really mean?

BBVA Compass recently announced the launch of two new industry-leading fraud prevention and account reconciliation products, BBVA Compass RealTimeARP™ and BBVA Compass RealTime Positive Pay™. Shortly after the launch, we took a closer look at Positive Pay. Today, we put the bank’s ARP product under the microscope.

Deposit accounts, put simply, are bank accounts that allow money to be deposited and withdrawn by the account holder. The bank notes the balance of these accounts on its books as a liability, as it’s the amount the bank owes to the customer.

There's a fix for confusing economic terms or not being up-to-date with financial news: “influencers” aren't just gamers or it-girls; many experts in the finance domain use the virtual world to provide information, data, and opinions about financial and economic topics.

True to its commitment to innovation, BBVA announced the signing of a €35 million flexible term loan with spanish-based multinational Cosentino. This is the first time this format has been offered in the Spanish market, and was conceived by BBVA to meet the financing needs of its customers.