BBVA has joined a consortium of eleven major European financial institutions that have formed a joint venture, Qivalis, to launch a euro-pegged stablecoin. The aim is to enable faster and cheaper payments, as well as the settlement of digital assets within a regulated environment backed by all the safeguards that a European bank can offer. The commercial launch is slated for the second half of 2026, once the technical and regulatory developments have been completed.

The BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Information and Communication Technologies has gone in this eighteenth edition to engineers Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen for designing the cryptographic technologies that “underpin today’s digital age,” in the words of the committee, protecting the security of “millions of connected devices worldwide.”

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.

Garanti BBVA completely reshaped digital banking in 2025. With generative artificial intelligence at the heart of its digital strategy, the bank has evolved the user experience, making it more intuitive, more personalized and smarter. Garanti BBVA Mobile has transformed the banking experience by seamlessly integrating into millions of customers’ daily lives.

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’s Turkish unit has introduced a new tool on its Garanti BBVA Mobile app to help customers manage their personal finances, improve their financial health and plan for the future. ‘My Credit Coach’ provides an overview of each customer’s financial situation based on their banking history and offers personalized recommendations.

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.

BBVA’s digital banks in Europe are exploring what could become the first banking app in the world natively integrated within ChatGPT, marking a bold step forward in how financial services integrate with conversational AI. This demonstration shows how people will be able to discover BBVA’s products and services in Italy and Germany through a dedicated BBVA app built directly into OpenAI’s conversational assistant.

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.

Just over a year ago, BBVA created its Digital Banks unit, led by Murat Kalkan, an executive with a strong background in diverse retail banking businesses at BBVA, to drive the bank’s push into new markets with a fully digital model.

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.

Garanti BBVA was internationally honored for its design excellence, earning two distinctions from the iF Design Awards for its updated Garanti BBVA mobile app and the Pulse app, and another from the A Design Awards for its ‘My Home, My Car, My Travel’ project — showcasing its highly innovative approach to user experience and digital design.

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.

BBVA has completed the global rollout of ADA (Analytics + Data + AI), the group's data platform, which is now operational across all geographies within BBVA's footprint, consolidating a unique, efficient, and wholly cloud-based technology model.

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.

Garanti BBVA Pensions was honored with the silver award in the Digital Transformation category of the Smart-i Awards for its innovative approach to digitizing insurance sales on Garanti BBVA Mobile.

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 has introduced an innovative new feature to its banking app, allowing customers to personalize their Visa cards using Image Playground with Apple Intelligence technology. The functionality is now available in Spain on virtual cards for users with iPhone 15 Pro and newer models, and will soon be extended to physical cards.

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 Crypto is now offering trading and transfers in Tether (USDT), allowing users to do business with the popular dollar-pegged stablecoin via the Ethereum network and trade USDT pairs.

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.

The three-year project, titled Fair Learning, will address the main ethical, technical and regulatory challenges posed by the growing automation of decisions that impact society. A multidisciplinary team of BBVA and The University of Navarra will explore the use of advanced mathematical and statistical methods to correct data bias, integrate philosophical and ethical frameworks into model development, and devise a set of best practices based on international legislation.

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.

Proptech company PropHero has secured financing from BBVA Spark to drive its growth in the Spanish real estate market, where it plans to double its business volume by year-end 2025.

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.

BBVA continues to drive growth in Europe with the appointment of Walter Rizzi as Head of Digital Banking in Italy, a key role in adapting the bank’s offering to the needs of the local market.