BBVA Switzerland has signed an agreement to collaborate with the blockchain company Metaco to host its digital asset custody service, a trailblazer in Europe, on the  Harmonize™ platform. With this agreement, the bank is embarking on a new stage in its crypto strategy, characterized by the highest standards in security and greater agility in transactions. In addition, it opens the door to BBVA expanding its range of services in the future in order to meet the needs of its institutional clients.

ONE is the new software development culture at BBVA. Thanks to this initiative, over 15,000 developers will work in a more coordinated, collaborative manner, sharing best practices at the bank and in the industry with the goal of creating solutions that best meet customers’ needs.

Accenture and The New York Times have devoted the latest episode of their ‘Built For Change’ podcast to BBVA’s ongoing transformation. David Puente, global head of Client Solutions, describes a process that has been hugely successful for the BBVA app, but which is still far from over. The next big impact: artificial intelligence.

In 2022, more than $3.8 billion worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen. Traditional banks are therefore regaining ground to become service providers as custodians of crypto assets. This was the position advocated during the event hosted by El Confidencial by Alfonso Gómez, CEO of BBVA Switzerland. For more than two years now, BBVA Switzerland has enabled its customers to manage bitcoin, ether, and the rest of their investments from the online banking app.

Image: Alfonso Gómez, CEO of BBVA Switzerland, with Javier Molina, from El Confidencial, during a moment of his talk. /El Confidencial

Atom Bank, the UK’s first app based bank, has again received support from its long-term shareholders. BBVA, Toscafund and Infinity Investment Partners are participating in a new capital round of £100 million, about €115 million¹, to continue its growth in mortgages and loans to SMEs. Following this round, BBVA remains Atom’s leading shareholder.

There is a staggering $2.5 trillion global trade finance gap that mainly affects SMEs in emerging countries, limiting their ability to access new business opportunities. Helping businesses to bridge this finance gap, supply chain fintech Twinco Capital is today announcing it has secured an additional €50 million facility with BBVA Spark to accelerate growth.

BBVA has announced the creation of BBVA Technology, a new company that is to gather the experience and talent of the Group's three tech firms: BBVA Next Technologies, BBVA IT España, and Datio. The new company will have a more strategic focus while offering more career development opportunities for the bank’s tech teams.

Garanti BBVA and the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Türkiye (KAGIDER) commemorated the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Türkiye at the Women Entrepreneurs of the Year Summit.

IBM Institute for Business Value interviews Carmela Gómez on the opportunity that embedded finance brings to banks, digital platforms and consumers. The Global Head of Open Banking at BBVA states that embedded finance means a joint transformation of the entire ecosystem, both financial and non-financial, and that for its development to materialize, "we must look at the way in which our customers rely on interacting with financial services within their digital experiences. I believe banking will soon become very different from how we know it today, that’s why we need to fund this transformation now."

NFTs are unique and verifiable representations of digital assets, such as works of art, music, videos, virtual collectibles and other types of digital content, based on blockchain technology to guarantee their authenticity and ownership. Over 64 percent of those who purchase NFTs do so for profitability, while 12 percent are simply collectors.

BBVA has incorporated a new form of connection to its treasury solutions via API, reducing companies’ integration times for BBVA Pivot Connect by 80 percent. The first three APIs, available on BBVA Pivot, make it possible for companies to manage and trace payments to suppliers, track international payments, and check balances and transactions in accounts in any country.

BBVA Spark is the financial ally of high-impact companies and the partner of reference for the entire ecosystem of entrepreneurs. This unit, already present in Mexico, Spain and Colombia, will expand to the rest of the South American countries.

Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Red Hat, Cisco, IBM, Genesys, Salesforce and Telefónica all form part of BBVA's strategy of technological alliances. Thanks to these partnerships, BBVA has built up ways of working together, set up expert teams and developed cutting-edge tailor-made solutions with the most innovative tech companies, which are key to its growth and digitalization plans.

The main mission of BBVA's Security Operations team is to adopt all the necessary security measures in the face of an increasingly diverse cybercriminal reality. To this end, it has highly specialized teams in charge of assessing the security measures and processes implemented in the Group, as well as monitoring, detecting, and responding to any security risk or threat. Hundreds of hackers make up this team worldwide, organized into offensive, defensive, and transversal teams.

BBVA has become the first bank in Spain to make registration and login available to its customers at online retailers and service providers through a new Bizum service. This new way of operating online allows customers to streamline the processes related to registration and access to their personal accounts in companies, businesses, or digital providers. Consequently, it eliminates the need to enter data -such as email or passwords- and allows the entire process to be carried out by simply providing the telephone number associated with Bizum. Since BBVA integrated the Bizum service in 2016, more than four million of its customers use this solution daily to pay.

BBVA has relied on behavioral economics techniques to encourage employee participation in cybercrime training. The messages conveyed through the use of these techniques have effectively doubled interest in the course and, in some cases, increased course attendance by up to 70%. The initiative, which has been recognized by the Global Association of Applied Behavioural Scientists, will succeed in making the bank’s regular cybersecurity messages to its customers more effective.