The Banker names BBVA the world’s best technology bank

The Banker has recognized BBVA for its technological journey. In the past year, the bank has reached an agreement with OpenAI to integrate generative AI into its employees’ day-to-day work; transformed its data platform to operate on the cloud; expanded its AI Factory to Mexico and Turkey to continue promoting the Group’s artificial intelligence projects; and finalized the fully digital banking model implemented in Italy, meeting growth estimates two years ahead of schedule.

Some of the customer solutions that played a role in BBVA winning the award included the customer service chatbot Blue, which has been using generative AI since early 2025 to offer customers more empathetic, conversational interactions, as well as the option to carry out certain banking transactions over chat; the Energy Advisor feature, also on the app, which helps users make their home more energy efficient, and have a positive impact on their finances; and the pioneering mass payment platform, which allows companies to process hundreds or thousands of payments in a matter of seconds, a task that previously took hours.

“We would like to thank The Banker for this recognition, which pushes us to continue innovating. For BBVA, technology only makes sense when it meets the needs of our customers,” explained David Puente, Global Head of Retail Client Solutions at BBVA. “The initiatives recognized by The Banker are just the beginning of what’s to come. We are currently in the middle of a new transformation, driven by AI and a new way of supporting our customers in their personal and professional endeavors,  so that we remain at the cutting-edge and make a difference in the financial services sector.”

The Technology Awards recognize the projects that are “the most innovative, imaginative and successful in financial technology from around the world, projects that not only revolutionize markets, but also set new standards for the sector,” in the words of the publication. The Banker also recognized BBVA’s data platform, ADA, as the Best Transformation Project in the world.

ADA, which also received Global Finance’s ‘The Innovators’ award, represents a key milestone in the bank’s digital transformation process, as it unites all of the Group’s data management in a single global infrastructure. The bank replaced a fragmented local system with limitations with an efficient, scalable platform stored on the Amazon Web Services cloud. ADA is capable of managing 4 petabytes of data and over 40,000 processes, boosting the agility, security and accessibility of the data.

“ADA has significantly improved our ability to offer personalized, efficient and secure data services while reducing time to market and improving operational efficiency. It provides a solid foundation to accelerate the adoption of advanced capabilities such as generative AI, real-time data processing and unstructured data analysis, helping BBVA to scale innovation more quickly and with a greater impact,” explained Carlos Casas, Global Head of Engineering at BBVA.

Thanks to the power of the cloud, the time needed to prepare analytical environments for end users has declined by 94 percent. Furthermore, the platform offers dynamic scalability, adjusting the resources needed based on the demand, thus optimizing performance and operational costs. This development allows BBVA to enable artificial intelligence in real time, responding quickly to the demands of the current digital environment and centralizing information management for all countries.

In 2024, the bank migrated data from Spain, Uruguay, central services and the Corporate and Investment Banking unit with no interruptions to customer services, and plans to complete the data migration for Latin America in 2025.