The report 'Impact of COVID-19 on Consumption in Real Time and High Frequency´ in Spain, published by BBVA Research, reflects a 28 percent increase in card purchases  compared to June 2019 levels. Transactions grew by 19 percent y-o-y through face-to-face channels and 69 percent in non-face-to-face channels. The increase in mobility saw a boost in spending, especially in consumer sectors such as hospitality and leisure, and in those that involve travel, such as transport.

Consumption continued growing at strong rates in June, despite the correction of most of the base effect in year-on-year terms. Mobility-dependent sectors continued recovering unevenly on a per country basis, but rates remained particularly strong in the restaurant and catering industry. This are some of the key takeaways of 'The COVID-19 Impact on Consumption in Real Time and High Definition', a report published by BBVA Research.

The BBVA CEO underscored banks' advisory work as an essential element in their new customer value proposition, during his participation in the sixteenth edition of the IESE Banking Meeting, held today under the motto “Helping to boost the economy.” Onur Genç also stressed that this advice is based on the trust and knowledge of an expert, and that through the use of technology and data, banks can improve the value they deliver to clients. In addition, he dubbed climate change one of the biggest disruptions in the history of mankind and also a huge opportunity.

StepEx has raised £1.1 million in pre-initial funding, with the venture studio BBVA Anthemis Venture Partnership being the lead investor. This startup from the UK offers an alternative system of student finance based on the estimation of their future income, to democratize access to postgraduate qualifications.

No venture fund can reveal all its secrets, is the first thing Propel says when asked how it selects the startups in which it wants to invest. But it does recognize that there are elements that are as clear a sign as any to detect a great company.

With more than 40 companies in its portfolio, six of them considered unicorns (valued above $1 billion) and two listed on the public stock markets, Propel has become a corporate venture capital benchmark since it was founded five years ago. The book 'Transactional to Transformational - How Banks Innovate', recently published by Wiley, recounts how BBVA opted to create an independently managed fund in order to approach the most promising fintech.

eSports is one of the digital industries that has grown the most during the COVID-19 pandemic. In May 2021, more than nine million users watched around 2.3 billion hours of gameplay on the streaming platform Twitch alone, which in the first quarter of the year reached a historic 6.3 billion hours watched, doubling the viewing figures of the same quarter in 2020. It is estimated that by 2022 eSports will have global audiences of more than 600 million followers. Streamers are looking to offer these audiences unique new experiences that go beyond gaming and even leap from the virtual to the physical realm.

BBVA experts recommend that SMEs should digitize, become more technified, and increase their training to adapt to the new times in order to get onboard the sustainability train and make progress in their recovery.

After the incidents of the previous months (SolarWinds, Codecov,...) it is becoming more evident that it is necessary to have a strong inventory and control over the components with which we build our software, as well as to strengthen the process used to build it.

Endeavor, the global entrepreneurship organization, convened four European banks at its event 'Leading Innovation in Financial Services' to seek synergies and formulas that promote innovation. Ainhoa Campo, global manager of Open Innovation at BBVA, pointed to the “robust growth” of fintech’s ecosystem in southern Europe.

According to 'Impact of COVID-19 on Consumption in Real Time and High Definition', a report by BBVA Research, May 2021 card spending was 19 percent higher than in May 2019 (+36 percent y-o-y, i.e. compared to May 2020). Spending in restaurants and leisure grew the most, driven by the lifting of state of alarm restrictions.

The end to mobility restrictions has begun to show in the hotel, restaurant, entertainment, and transport sectors. All of them displayed signs of recovery in May 2021, although at unequal rates depending on the country. This according to 'The COVID-19 Impact on Consumption in Real Time and High Definition,' the latest report published by BBVA Research.

After six months of testing with a selected group of users, BBVA Switzerland makes its first crypto-asset trading and custody service available to all its private banking clients.

This competency status is a significant milestone for BBVA Next Technologies as it is a seal of quality recognized by AWS for carrying out high-quality projects in the DevOps field with total confidence.

In the last six years, BBVA’s original team of less than ten designers has bloomed into a community of more than 500. This year the bank earned a special mention at the Spanish National Design Awards. In the meantime, design became a strategic driver of its transformation process, allowing customers to play a leading role by determining the design of its products. BBVA is facing the future trying to scale up its products by globally with efficiency, integrating data into design and exploring new user experience features, such as voice-enabled navigation.

A short meeting first thing in the morning can be more productive than a two hour meeting at midday, and a team working on a project no longer needs to complete one phase to start the next. These are two examples of what BBVA employees have learned since they incorporated agile methodologies into their daily working lives, practices that have been further strengthened in the last year under the pandemic.

BBVA strengthens its offering for multinational companies with BBVA Pivot. Behind the renewal of its global treasury services lies a strategy to conquer a space that still offers great potential for growth. "We want to double the number of corporate clients that have implemented and operate with BBVA Pivot," says Javier Balbin, Global Head of Enterprise Solutions at BBVA.