BBVA with Six-figure Customer Base in Germany with 23% of Customers Holding Over 100,000 €
Germany is rapidly becoming one of the bank’s most important strategic growth markets in Europe. Since the launch of its digital retail bank in June 2025, BBVA has surpassed a six-figure customer base. Notably 90% of these customers have “activated, funded their accounts, and are actively using them,” Murat Kalkan, BBVA’s Global Head of Digital Banks, said today at FIBE in Berlin. That strong early confidence is further underscored by the fact that 23% (as of early 2026) of BBVA’s customers in Germany hold more than €100,000 with the bank. Kalkan emphasized that BBVA’s ambition is to become a genuine primary banking alternative for German customers.
In his opening keynote at Germany’s biggest FinTech Festival, Kalkan outlined BBVA’s ambition of becoming a full-service digital alternative for customers’everyday financial needs in Germany. “We are not aiming to be just a payments provider. We are building a bank that allows customers to manage all of their everyday finances under one roof. To that end, we have already launched with an initial universal banking proposition with multiple products across savings, lending and payments; and we will continue to expand our product suite further, ” said Murat Kalkan.The bank’s long-term goal is to build a broader proposition across payments, savings, and lending, with credit cards, mortgages, and investments to follow over time.
Positioned between incumbent and neobank
In Germany, BBVA offers a fully digital banking model with attractive terms, backed by the scale, experience and regulatory strength of a 169-year-old institution supervised by the ECB, with all customer deposits protected up to €100,000. With 80 million customers worldwide and one of the strongest capital positions in Europe, BBVA combines the best of a traditional universal bank and a neobank: a fully digital user experience underpinned by the technological and institutional strength of a global financial group.
In practice, this means moving quickly on product development while maintaining the standards of a regulated full-service bank. In less than a year, BBVA has built a broad digital product ecosystem in Germany. The offering includes a permanently fee-free interest-earning current account – a rarity in the market – with integrated savings functionality and remuneration, a digital lending offer through One Click Loan, the Pay & Plan installment feature. Customers also benefit from flexible fixed-term deposits with up to 3.2% p.a. with multiple maturities up to 5 years, travel insurance, an integration in ChatGPT Apps, and a variable long-term interest rate of up to 2.5% p.a. for active customers, ensuring the account remains rewarding well beyond the initial promotional period.
Retail banking in Europe is becoming increasingly international
This broad product offering reflects a broader strategic vision. At FIBE, Murat Kalkan made clear that European retail banking is undergoing a structural shift: the industry is consolidating, becoming more global and digital, and being reshaped by new platforms and AI that are lowering costs and intensifying competition.
“The new competition requires significant scale,” emphasized Murat Kalkan, underscoring that BBVA already has that scale in Europe. Germany and Italy are the first two markets where BBVA is rolling out its digital retail banking model in Europe. “We focus on our strategy, combining the upsides of neobanks, which is the pricing, transparency, attractiveness, and the customer experience, with the trust and products. We are scaling products from our European roots. We already have around 10 million customers in Europe. The scale is already there,” Kalkan added.
Italy serves as an important reference point in that strategy. Over the past four years, BBVA has built a digital bank there with a broad universal banking proposition, ranging from current accounts and credit cards to mortgages and investment products and aiming to reach a million customers in 2026. Germany is accelerating this roadmap and following the same long-term logic. The credit card is the next concrete rollout step this year, while investment products and mortgage lending are expected to follow as part of the long-term roadmap.
Artificial intelligence as a decisive competitive factor
Murat Kalkan highlighted AI as crucial for competing in digital banking, stating BBVA aims to lead the AI transformation of financial services, as it did with digitalization. To achieve this goal, BBVA has a cross-cutting AI roadmap focused on creating a new way of interaction with customers, transforming internal processes to be more efficient, and boosting employee capabilities by eliminating valueless tasks to focus on serving the customers better.
BBVA has rolled out to mostly all the employees leading generative AI tools, including ChatGPT Enterprise, Gemini and Microsoft tools for developers, to simplify tasks. This is enabled by a unique strategic alliance with OpenAI, going beyond ChatGPT use to include joint work on agents, AI architecture, preferential access to new models, and the shared goal of redefining banking.
BBVA has also created a conversational and personalized experience for German users through features in the ChatGPT Apps to help them understand products and services in a more intuitive and personalized way, reducing friction and making banking easier to navigate. Additionally, the BBVA AI-powered Discreet Mode in the BBVA App helps protect sensitive information on screen.
He also emphasized that this technological transformation is designed to augment, not replace, the human element. “Our approach is that AI is going to superpower every single employee. We want to focus on growth and empower our teams to serve customers better,” he stated.