What sort of a future awaits the banking sector? This morning, BBVA Executive Director José Manuel González-Páramo gave a 360-degree view of that future, during a speech at the opening of the academic year at the Fundación Sant Elmo in Seville. Banks, he said, face two possible scenarios: one in which they remain static, and which will cause them to disappear; or a transformative scenario, which implies a complete reinvention of the sector.

We’ve all been there before. You’re in a rush and you have somewhere to be with very little time to get from Point A to Point B. But you also have a check to deposit and you’ve been holding off on doing it for the longest time.

Facebook continues to take steps to reach the widest possible public and as it does so, minimize the competition. As part of its constant tug-of-war with Snapchat, Facebook has acquired an app that is very popular among adolescents: the polling startup “tbh,” which allows users to send messages anonymously, in response to survey questions about their friends. The acronym tbh” means “to be honest.”

According to recently released BBVA Research data, people around the globe could send their loved ones up to $606 billion in remittances in 2017, which made us wonder. What are the elements that impact remittances when they are sent?

According to the Global Head of Tuyyo Ignacio de Loyola Gil Puértolas, remittance senders should be aware of two main elements: exchange rates and transaction fees. Exchange rates are the amount of foreign currency received for each dollar sent. Fees are the amount the sender pays to the service provider for transferring the funds.

WhatsApp continues to add new functions in its effort to become a “total” application. The Facebook-owned company is currently developing a new feature that will allow users to make group voice and video calls. The project is currently in a development phase and is expected to see the light in 2018.

BBVA has been in Las Vegas this week, taking part in one of the world’s biggest fintech events, Money 20/20. The scale of the conference is huge - more than 11,000 delegates, including 1,700 CEOs and Presidents, from 4,500 companies and more than 85 countries around the world. BBVA’s CEO, Carlos Torres Vila and its Head of Customer and Client Solutions, Derek White, both attended, alongside several other senior leaders.