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

The two Spanish companies have met with a selected group of Europe’s most promising startups and scaleups at an event promoted by the European Innovation Council (EIC) of the European Commission. 18 disruptive top-class innovators from 13 countries, including Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Norway were able to explain their proposals to the Open Innovation teams of both companies

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.

"Hello! Finally, we meet! I have been specifically designed to help you better understand the ins and outs of your daily finances.  I am always available and crunching the numbers is one of my favorite tasks."

This could be the start of a friendship, a virtual friendship, because the virtual assistant is a “bot” enabled in BBVA’s app whose express mission is to better control customer finances. “We call it a  'pseudo-bot’ ... initially resembling conversational interfaces,” explains Sergio Ruiz Navarro, who is responsible for the design/UX of this endearing creature whose mission is to understand if customers do a good job (or not) of managing their money.

As the General Manager of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), Agustín Carstens, said, “New technology is not the same as better, or more efficient technology.” However, you don’t have to be a techno-optimist to recognize that the evolution of technology is unstoppable and improvements can be expected to address things like the volatility of cryptocurrencies. In fact, solutions are already being considered for this problem, such as stable digital currency, or “stablecoins”.