U.K. digital banking disruptor Atom has signed up with the Bacs payment system to boost its offering and enable its customers to offer direct debits for the first time.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is a neurologic condition that causes people suffering from it to be dominated by anxiety and develop unwanted thoughts that they cannot get rid of. Researchers at the Universidad Carlos III are applying artificial intelligence techniques to detect which brain areas are affected by this disorder. Emilio Parrado, a data scientist at BBVA was one of the researchers that took part in the project and explains how machine learning can bring huge improvements to any activity, including finance.

Fintechs and major tech corporations have started rolling out new financial services that have the potential to severely disrupt the financial sector.  BBVA Research has just published “Digital Transformation and Competition in the Financial Sector,” a working paper that analyzes the regulatory challenges emerging in this new scenario to guarantee that customers can reap the benefits enabled by new technologies while ensuring fair competition conditions in an increasingly diverse ecosystem.

Each year the Las Vegas CES technology trade fair becomes a parade of outlandish devices as the the big industry trend-setters make their announcements for the coming year. Manufacturers like LG and Samsung compete to show off the latest models of their flexible displays or connected household appliances, while the likes of Amazon and Google continue the battle to place their virtual assistants in as may products as possible. What happened this year?

World Finance magazine has named BBVA as Spain’s best digital bank and the bank with the best app in its ‘World Finance Digital Banking Awards 2018.’ The awards single out those companies that are successfully tackling industry challenges and “driving the digital revolution with dynamic business strategies and groundbreaking technologies.”

Garanti Bank is expanding its unique range of innovative products and services with the rollout of Garanti Stories, a new feature embedded in the Garanti Cep app. Garanti Stories offers services that go beyond traditional banking while fulfilling customers' basic needs and expectations, delivering an experience similar to the stories on popular social media platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram.