The emergence of technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain has exponentially multiplied the volume of data used, putting current computer systems to the test. Despite the fact that the arrival of 5G promises an improvement in these limitations, it is not enough to respond to the performance demands of this latest generation technology. An alternative to this is edge computing.

Yesil Science was created with the objective of developing innovative solutions to healthcare, combining medicine, art, and technology. In addition, it is a company that has participated in the Garanti BBVA Partners program.

The tokenisation of assets via blockchain could facilitate new financing pathways, guarantee secure investments and programme digital money so that it can only be used for certain purposes, although the associated regulations have not yet materialised.

According to a report by Smartme Analytics, BBVA’s app has the largest share of users at 22.6%. BBVA’s country manager for Spain, Peio Belausteguigoitia, stressed that “investment in technology in recent years enabled a rapid reaction to the crisis.” Peio made these comments at the 27th Meeting of the Financial Sector, with the theme ‘Building the Future’, hosted by Deloitte and ABC (a leading Spanish newspaper), while speaking about the role of the financial sector in the crisis and its future challenges.

Onur Genç participated in ‘The Global Boardroom: Shaping the recovery’ forum organized by the Financial Times, where he shared his vision of the pandemic’s effect on the banking sector. The BBVA CEO pointed out that this crisis has accelerated certain dynamics, such as the digitization of banks’ business models, although this trend “was already in place.” For example, he explained that customer interactions in the bank’s app have multiplied by fivefold in the last year.

The Navarra-based company Veridas has experienced solid growth since its creation in 2017 and has established itself as a global leader in the field of biometrics and digital identity verification. Its two founding partners, BBVA and Das-Nano, have carried out a financing round of four million euros in the company that will serve to continue expanding their business in new markets.

It’s a challenge to find out what society thinks about a company or brand, especially when you have 40 million followers spread across 10 countries and 190 social media profiles, like BBVA. Even so, the winners of the BBVA Hackathon 2020 accomplished it in only three days, developing a tool to measure users’ feelings about the bank on social media, using machine learning techniques.

What better way to demonstrate just how secure the card is than Jaime Bisbal, BBVA’s Head of Marketing in Spain, showing his off in the middle of the street? This is the bank’s way of introducing Aqua, the new family of bank cards that have no number (PAN) or expiration date printed on them and whose security code (CVV) is dynamic.

Biometric advances are already being used in a multitude of financial sector processes. Artificial intelligence can analyse speech and facial characteristics to create a digital identity that allows for a much more secure online setting, where there’s a proliferation of apps from customised services to health care.

Garanti BBVA is betting on technology and innovation to continue leading the payment system and credit card sector. Now customers can complete the credit card application and authorization process on Bonus’ website and start enjoying all of the benefits immediately.

In its efforts to continue supporting the financial group’s digital transformation,  BBVA Hackathon is announcing its 20th edition, which will take place on October 16th – 18th. It will be virtual this year, with countries participating where BBVA Open Innovation has a presence like Mexico, Spain, Colombia and Peru.

Blue is pleasant, patient, and able to put itself in the shoes of others. It loves talking to humans and is always willing and ready to help customers. And it wants to learn lots of things in order to become even more insightful. These are just some of the personality traits that characterize BBVA’s new voice assistant, which came to life out of a complex process that factored even the most minor details.

BBVA Group will gradually roll out the next generation of wireless connection technology — WiFi 6 — across its corporate offices in Spain and Portugal. The bank thus becomes one of the first Spanish financial companies to adopt the technology, which will provide faster browsing speeds and greater coverage to complement 5G.

Corporate virtual security has become even more important as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Cybercriminals have found new opportunities in digitization and remote-working to commit fraud and cyber attacks; companies and employees alike have to be prepared against this risk. To this end, Campus BBVA has trained approximately 2,000 employees using courses, conferences, and discussion groups focused on digitization and tele-working as strategic capabilities that promise to be fundamental during the near future.

BBVA is the first bank in Spain to allow zero-touch cash withdrawals from its ATMs, called ‘contactless ATMs’. This new way of accessing cash not only streamlines the process, it also provides additional protection to customers during times of pandemic.

The sixth generation of WiFi delivers faster connectivity, expands its reach, and supports a greater density of connected devices. This technology, which goes hand-in-hand with 5G, will facilitate the rollout of sensors for the Internet of Things (IoT) and the creation of immersive and augmented virtual reality experiences.

Álvaro Garrido has been safeguarding the integrity of BBVA’s assets for the past three years. In his role as Chief Security Officer (CSO), he’s responsible not only for the Group’s physical & digital security, but also for its fraud prevention efforts, an exceptionally broad range of duties for such a large company and, at the same time, a great professional challenge.

BBVA in Spain’s mobile banking app adds an average of 60 new features every year. Users especially appreciated the ability to manage their finances on the app during the lockdown. They also value the channel’s speed – the app opens in just two seconds – and how easy it is to use.  Bank customers gave the app a score of 4.7 on Google – the highest in the industry and close to the maximum score of 5. The app reached this score after the outbreak of the pandemic, when it became and essential tool.

Beyond hastening the adoption of specific technologies – such as telemedicine or robotics – one of the brightest outcomes of the scenario brought about by the coronavirus pandemic has been the unprecedented collaborative spirit that has emerged, which could unleash deeper changes in technological development in the coming years. The challenges posed by the coronavirus aftermath may lead to increasing levels of data sharing and faster deployment of solutions to preserve privacy, which could help lay the foundation for new digital infrastructures.

Reliability, convenience, sustainability, trust, and security are key words consumers and businesses want to associate with their bank. The best example of where these words blend to one concrete concept in the banking industry is in data and technology.

In its third year, the BBVA global ninja hackathon took place virtually for the first time. Local teams representing the digital talent community from seven of the bank’s operating countries participated in the event. Despite the separation by distance, more than 1,000 BBVA ninjas joined the initiative, helping their teams solve technological challenges created by Amazon Web Services (AWS). At this year’s event, U.S. team SQL Injection emerged as the global winner.

Cybercriminals are taking advantage of COVID-19 and the new reality it has imposed: telecommuting hitting peak levels and huge amounts of information — and misinformation — circulating the Internet. Scammers are ramping up their activities as they try to maximize ill-gotten gains. We explain how these organized groups work, what attacks are the most common, and what we can do to protect ourselves.

More than 700 people have responded to BBVA Next Technology’s invitation to participate in Tech4Change. The initiative is grounded in a spirit of solidarity and seeks collaborators who want to contribute to the development of two technological solutions, both of which have been conceived by BBVA employees with the goal of helping small businesses weather the COVID-19 crisis. Over the coming weeks, the assembled teams will work together on two solutions: a platform that allows small businesses to manage orders from home and an application that cuts down on customer traffic in establishments that provide essential goods or services.

Since the start of the COVID outbreak, a plethora of mobile data collection applications have been developed to help users to report their symptoms and track the disease. In countries like South Korea these ‘apps’ have gone even further and provide authorities with the ability to alert users when they’ve been in direct contact with a confirmed positive case. In this article we take a look at how these applications work, what they are for and how they handle user information.

In the era of forced social distancing as a result of the SARS-COV-2 pandemic, this technology has become one of biggest allies in the fight against the coronavirus.

Transactionality in databases is fundamental for critical systems, but the historical asymmetry between reads (massive) and writes (specific, but can impact in the middle of a read operation) could be solved with a new approach. Last year Databricks released to the community a new data persistence format built on Write-Once Read-Many (HDFS, S3, Blob storage) and based on Apache Parquet.

In the last few weeks the international community has called on the innovation ecosystem to band together in a coordinated fight against the coronavirus pandemic. A large number of initiatives have risen to the occasion, encompassing schemes that support startups, developers that propose technical solutions, and requests for institutions to share their data with the scientific community. These projects share a single goal: to combine forces, creativity, and resources in the fight against the virus and its far-reaching effects.

Researchers, businesses, and innovators around the world are putting technology to work to alleviate the effects of the global health crisis. From applications that collect data to track the spread of the virus to 3D printed ventilators for hospitals: these are some of the various technology projects rising to the occasion in the fight against coronavirus.

While the pandemic created by the novel COVID-19 develops and sends Americans down an unprecedented path, fraudsters are jumping at the chance to capitalize on that uncertainty.

As long as bots continue to harbor gender bias, they will continue contributing to the perpetuation of gender inequality. This is why BBVA Next Technologies, BBVA’s advanced software company, is working to reduce this kind of bias, leveraging technology to bridge the gender gap.

Pablo Inchausti works at BBVA Argentina and is a very special member of the ‘Ninja’ initiative. In 2019, he became the first person to earn a black belt as part of this program designed to promote and give visibility to BBVA’s technological talent. Now he’s willing to help more and more colleagues do the same.

BBVA’s ‘Ninja’ initiative is a pioneering program designed to allow any employee to acquire technological knowledge and skills thanks to the use of gamification techniques and training offered by the best tech companies and educational platforms in the market. Following its success in the units more linked to the Group’s technological transformation –where nearly 9,000 employees are currenlty enrolled–, it will expand to new areas of the bank in 2020.

Voice is already the gateway to many services and applications that have become an integral part of our daily lives. The level of intuitiveness and user-friendliness enabled by voice-based interfaces place them heads and shoulders above other options when it comes to interacting in a seamless way with our devices. From a biometrics standpoint, voice offers additional benefits.

Cisco Chairman and CEO Chuck Robbins visited BBVA headquarters on the occasion of the fourth anniversary of their strategic partnership.

Quantum computing has taken a short time to make a big leap: from R&D laboratories to corporate meeting rooms. BBVA began its quantum journey almost two years ago and now has a team specialized in quantum development, business units involved in the initiative, strategic alliances agreed, and various lines of research in place.

BBVA CEO Onur Genç recently visited the U.S. operations of BBVA in a homecoming of sorts. As the President and CEO of the global financial services company’s U.S. subsidiary in 2017 and 2018, Genç is highly familiar with the bank’s U.S. operations, and the team was glad to welcome him back for a series of meetings meant to encourage the market as they begin the execution phase of the bank’s new 5-year strategic plan.

Is it possible to take advantage of big data without it affecting the privacy of users? The answer may reside in “Privacy-enhancing technologies”, or PETs, a set of technologies that use different computational and mathematical approaches with the same purpose: extracting data value in order to unleash its full commercial, scientific and social potential, without jeopardizing the privacy and security of this information.

More and more companies are looking to grow through the creation and adoption of proprietary technology solutions. Tech intensity is an indicator of a business’ capacity to innovate in a landscape where digital skills and tools are a must-have in virtually every sector.

Did you know? There are more than 1,300 different roles within BBVA—and they all play a critical role in creating opportunities for our customers. Over the coming months, we’ll be profiling some team members and sharing how they’re Working for Our Customers.

2019 has seen the first 5G networks rolled out and the first achievements in quantum computing, as well as the establishment of various financial initiatives using blockchain. These three technologies will mark a before and after in the banking sector in the years to come.

As part of Garanti BBVA’s goal to enhance customer experience on the go, the bank is now offering customer service on a corporate WhatsApp account. The new WhatsApp service allows customers to resolve their problems quickly and get detailed information on the bank’s products and services  – all on a channel they already use on a daily basis.

In this second article, BBVA experts in various fields give their views on the changes and breakthroughs that happened during 2019, and the ones we will see in the technological banking landscape in 2020.

Garanti BBVA Executive Vice President Didem Dinçer Başer joined the Women in Technology (Wtech) Association at their inaugural event, ‘Human Diversity in Technology.’ The Wtech Association aims to increase the number of women in technology by helping them fulfill their potential and advocating for equal opportunities. Didem Dinçer Başer participated in a panel entitled ‘Future with Technology’ where she discussed the future of digital banking and ever-changing customer expectations.

The role technology plays in people’s lives –both personal and business– is continually growing. As a bank, BBVA committed to transforming itself digitally long before the start of the last decade, understanding that technology was going to have a huge impact on how the industry operates. In this article, BBVA experts in various fields give their view on the changes that 2020 will see in the technological landscape.