Soacha in Colombia receives 20-60 new families a week that are fleeing from the armed conflict that torments the country. In this context, the support of Bancamía (the entity of BBVA Microfinance Foundation in Colombia) to small entrepreneurs plays a key role in the area’s economic development. Francisco González, Chairman and CEO of BBVA, visited three of these small businesses and saw their work first hand.

‘Internet of me’, the trend towards content specialization based on user profiles, is becoming a pivotal strategy on which forward-looking companies are focusing. We analyze the current status, growth prospects, the reasons why it is becoming such a big issue and its connections with blooming technology trends.

Venture Solutions Architect in BBVA’s New Digital Business division, José Manuel De la Chica, advocates for financial technology companies and financial institutions to collaborate in order to move ahead in the digital transformation.

BBVA Compass hosted clients at the Millennium Biltmore hotel in Los Angeles last week for an invitation-only forum featuring Kevin Mitnick, the world’s most famous hacker.

It is tempting to see the US presidential election as a watershed moment for the big US internet companies. Facebook, Twitter and Google have each, in their way, been cast in an unflattering light. They stand accused of helping to circulate fake news and conspiracy theories, most of it favouring the Trump camp, that may have worsened what was already a deeply partisan battle. And the raucous debate on Twitter often tipped into outright harassment and hate speech.

Technology is transforming the food industry. Scanners to determine food composition and menu creation using smartphone data are two of the trends that are taking off.

The newspaper Expansión has given prominence to BBVA's open innovation strategy in the second edition of the awards for the "50 best digital ideas". The intention of these awards is to recognize the efforts of Spanish companies and institutions to adapt their processes and services to the new digital economy.

"Your data is brilliant," pronounced Martina King, CEO of Featurespace, to the audience at 2016 FT Banking Summit, held this year at London’s Intercontinental Park Lane. Marco Bressan, Chief Data Scientist at BBVA and responsible for helping the bank become a data-driven business, talked about the volume of data at the bank’s disposal.

The fourth Industrial Revolution is just beginning and the Internet of Things is playing a role similar to that of the steam engine in the first Industrial Revolution at the end of the 18th Century.

Smart contracts have been an impossible dream since the 1990s, but now blockchain technology has breathed new life into this concept aimed at automating contractual relations between people or machines without the involvement of a trusted intermediary.