The financing, closed at the end of 2025, aims to support the scaling of Lanes & Planes, the leading provider of digital solutions for mid-market business travel and expense management. The facility will serve to finance the company's growth. This financing partially benefits from the support of the European Union and the European Investment Fund (EIF) under the InvestEU program.

Garanti BBVA was recently honored with two awards at the 2025 Digital Banking Awards, organized by international financial publishing group World Finance, for the ‘Best Digital Bank in Retail Banking’ and the ‘Best Mobile Banking App.’ The awards are a reflection of the bank’s approach to digital banking and its focus on customers.

In 2025, BBVA successfully completed the global rollout of ADA, its new data and artificial intelligence platform. This technological foundation is key in enabling the bank to offer clients more agile, personalized, and efficient services. Over the course of the year, ADA also received recognition from numerous international organizations operating in the financial and technology sectors.

At the 'Beyond Hype: crypto meets banking at BBVA' event, BBVA Spark brought together leaders from the crypto industry such as Andrei Manuel, founder of Bit2Me, Catriona Wingate, head of banking at BVNK in Europe, Asia and the Pacific, and Kaushik Sthankiya, head of banking at Kraken. The experts analysed the factors driving the growth of crypto companies, the opportunities and challenges they face when coexisting with traditional financial infrastructures, and how collaboration with banks can make a difference.

BBVA has rolled out a roadmap, known as ‘The Eight,’ aimed at ramping up the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to evolve the way the bank interacts with customers, manages risk, automates processes, and strengthens its technological capabilities. This decisive step forward in its transformation will enable the bank to radically improve its range of products and services through innovation and to structurally enhance its ways of working to boost value creation.

Image: Antonio Bravo, Head of Data at BBVA

BBVA and OpenAI have entered into a strategic alliance aimed at redefining the future of financial services through the use of artificial intelligence. The agreement, announced by Carlos Torres Vila, Chair of BBVA, and Sam Altman, CEO and Co-founder of OpenAI, marks a unique and unprecedented level of collaboration in the financial industry to build a radically customer-centric proposition and to drive a more productive and efficient operating model.

Shares, artwork, real estate… in fact pretty much any asset, can now have a digital twin. Tokenization is reshaping investments by making it possible to split tangible, real-world assets into tokens that can be bought or sold in a matter of seconds, with the utmost transparency and with no intermediaries. So what are the steps involved in turning tangible value from the physical world into its digital counterpart?

BBVA has closed its first growth capital transaction in Finland with Bob W, the Helsinki-born hospitality scaleup focused on redefining the short-stay experience across Europe through technology. This also marks BBVA’s first growth capital deal in Finland, coinciding with the bank’s debut as a key partner at Slush, the renowned global innovation event that gathers more than 13,000 attendees, 2,500 startups and 2,000 investors in Helsinki each year.

BBVA has secured a place among the world's leading digital banks, according to Euromoney’s latest report,  ‘The World’s Best Digital Banks.' The study evaluated more than 300 institutions globally, placing BBVA in the leadership category alongside digital-native rivals such as Revolut, Nubank, and Singapore-based DBS.

At BBVA, the adoption of artificial intelligence is much more than just a technological change: it represents a profound transformation of the banking business. The bank’s AI strategy is built on leadership and employee empowerment as a way to drive uptake and achieve a truly transformative impact. OpenAI invited Antonio Bravo, Global Head of Data, to take part in its annual event OpenAI Frontiers, where he explained how both entities are already transforming the banking sector, with tangible results.

BBVA Switzerland, together with the Group's Behavioral Economics team, has launched ‘Investing in the Mirror,’ an innovative interactive experience that invites us to reflect on the role of emotions, biases, and beliefs in our investment decisions. It's a different look at the relationship with money that combines technological innovation and behavioral psychology.

BBVA Germany is expanding its digital offering with a new ‘Bargeld via App’ cash‑in feature. From now on, customers can deposit cash directly into their BBVA account at participating supermarket and retail checkouts – quickly, securely, and without visiting a bank branch.

At BBVA Summit 2025: Futura, Hugo Nájera, Head of Retail Banking at BBVA Mexico, presented the new digital era of the BBVA Mx app. He explained that hyper-personalization is now at the core of its transformation, allowing the app to adapt to each customer’s needs and preferences through a single, unified channel.

BBVA Chair Carlos Torres Vila took part in the closing ceremony of the BBVA Spark Summit 2025 in Barcelona, the leading event for startups, scaleups and investors. In a dialogue with BBVA Spark Global Head Santiago Muguruza, he stressed AI’s central role in customer service and outlined a series of strategic AI projects designed to deliver excellence in customer‑relationship processes, customization and efficiency.

It will soon be enough to spot a shirt we like and just ask a voice-enabled AI device to send it home in our size and in a different color, bypassing the entire traditional online shopping process. Artificial intelligence is set to transform shopping into a conversational experience, explained Carmela Gómez, Global Head of Open Banking at BBVA, at the Sibos financial event. AI will also enable companies to anticipate cash needs, open up new financial opportunities for vulnerable communities, and make access to credit easier for gig economy workers.

AI-generated cover image

SWIFT, the global financial messaging network connecting more than 11,500 institutions in 200 countries, is set to develop a shared blockchain platform that will function as a common digital ledger for banks around the world. This infrastructure will enable seamless, real-time international payments and transfers and transactions with stablecoins and digital assets. BBVA has joined a consortium of more than 30 partner banks now starting work on a prototype.

BBVA once again attended the ‘Digital Assets’ Forum organized by El Confidencial. For the eighth time, the event brought together the Spanish crypto ecosystem, which is starting to move beyond the experimentation phase and roll out real services following the entry into force of MiCA. In this context, BBVA has established itself as an experienced player, as it was the first traditional European bank to offer a cryptoasset service in Switzerland in 2021, and the first to offer it in Spain. Alfonso Gómez, CEO of BBVA Switzerland, stressed the financial sector’s responsibility in supporting the consolidation of digital assets and the importance of offering customers safe, reliable solutions.

BBVA has launched a new service that enables financial institutions outside Europe to send payments to Spain in just seconds, at any time of day and on any day of the year. The service significantly enhances efficiency for sending banks while allowing recipients to access funds instantly, helping corporates optimize treasury management and offering retail customers a seamless experience.

Garanti BBVA has entered a new era in asset management in Türkiye by migrating its crypto asset portfolios to its app, Garanti BBVA Mobile. Garanti BBVA Crypto users can now easily view their crypto assets, along with price information in real time, gains and losses, and watchlists directly from the ‘Investments’ menu in the bank’s mobile app.

BBVA has taken a significant step forward in its data-driven transformation strategy with the successful implementation of ADA, its global data platform, in Mexico and Colombia. This strategic advance seeks to improve and accelerate the bank's ability to offer personalized and relevant products and services to its customers. The cloud-based data platform, built on Amazon Web Services (AWS) technologies, enables the centralized consolidation of analytical processes, ensures real-time access to data, and scales the use of artificial intelligence.

During the global launch of its new language model, OpenAI identified BBVA as one of the first institutions to adopt this technology in the financial sector. The bank has been testing the system in strategic tasks as part of its commitment to exploring the potential of generative artificial intelligence to enhance organizational processes and drive team innovation.

BBVA has reached a milestone in its commitment to artificial intelligence, surpassing 1,000 data scientists on staff. To further enhance this talent, the bank offers them a professional development model that allows these professionals to advance in their careers without giving up their specialization. In this innovative approach, technical expertise is placed on equal footing with team management as a path for professional growth, allowing them to remain involved in AI development as they advance in their careers.

BBVA has hired 23 recent graduates specializing in data for its technology teams. They were selected through the bank’s ‘Be Talent’ program, one of the main entryways for data specialists entering the Spanish job market. This innovative selection process evaluates not only the candidates’ technical skills and personal abilities, but also asks them to develop an analytical model for a real financial challenge in a ‘datathon’ that marks the final stage in the selection process.

Generative AI with autonomous financial agents, quantum computing capable of spotting fraud in seconds, and banking services embedded in health or e-commerce apps. According to 'Fintech 2040', a report drawn up by BNPL provider Riverty, this could well be how fintech evolves over the next two decades. The study suggests a world where the boundaries between payments, lending, insurance and investment fade, and financial services become an integral part of people’s everyday digital lives.

What if saving was easier than it seems? BBVA has revamped its app to help you save consistently in a streamlined and personalized way. Through tools based on artificial intelligence, it proposes realistic goals, guides you step by step and, if you set aside a monthly amount from your paycheck, pension or unemployment benefit, it rewards you with a 6 percent bonus of up to 20 euros per month for three months.

BBVA has unveiled its cryptocurrency trading and custody service for bitcoin and ether, which is now available to all retail customers of legal age in Spain. After filing the relevant disclosure with the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV), the bank has been gradually rolling out the service in recent weeks. Customers can now use this service to trade in bitcoin and ether directly through the BBVA app, all within a fully integrated environment that also includes the bank’s other financial services.