Garanti BBVA, Türkiye’s leading digital bank, is all set to stage ‘Istanbul Venture Day’ to support the startup ecosystem and help ramp up innovative fintech solutions. The event will be held at the Salt Galata center on October 24 and is being organized alongside IE University in Spain, with the close support of the Spanish and Italian consulates. It is essentially the Istanbul leg of the ‘Venture Day’ series being held by IE University ahead of the wider Global South Summit.
Innovation
Innovation
At BBVA, we are undergoing a technological revolution that is transforming our software development process. In mid-2021, we launched Horizon, a global initiative aimed at overhauling our digital channels, particularly in the enterprise sector, and enhancing the scalability of our technological platforms to meet the increasing demands for customer interaction. The primary goal is to foster global unity by creating unique technical solutions that can be implemented across multiple countries. This approach optimizes our efforts, speeds up delivery times, and provides us with a competitive edge in an industry where economies of scale are crucial. Additionally, this project has enabled us to adopt a new strategy for executing global programs by forming geographically diverse teams across different countries.
The bank is expanding its cryptocurrency custody and trading services to include USD Coin (USDC), a leading stablecoin whose value is pegged to the US dollar. This addition will enable BBVA’s institutional clients to speed up their trading operations by enabling them to transfer value more efficiently with blockchain and secure their stablecoins into BBVA’s vault.
The Global Startup Awards (GSA), one of the most prestigious events for independent startups, will be held in Türkiye for the first time on September 24-25. With Garanti BBVA as the lead sponsor, GSA aims to recognize innovative startups in the Turkish entrepreneurship ecosystem, while bringing together a large community of entrepreneurs, investors, VCs, thought leaders, industry benchmarks, ecosystem partners, and other key stakeholders.
The city of Barcelona is hosting the first edition of this event in Spain, which ran from August 25 to 29. Within the broad program of activities, BBVA sponsored its Finance Day, which focused on the applications of AI and machine learning within the financial industry.
Around 40 percent of BBVA’s business customers in Spain have upgraded to the Android PoS terminal, which offers more functionalities than a traditional device. Its operation is intuitive and resembles that of a mobile phone. The main screen displays applications for business management and a payment option. Merchants can easily process returns and view their transaction history.
BBVA’s AI Factory, a center dedicated to developing artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, expands to Mexico and Türkiye in order to create products globally and leverage knowledge across the Group. With these new centers, BBVA aims to accelerate the adoption of AI-based solutions to improve customer experience and optimize internal processes. In addition, the bank has hired 230 AI experts, doubling the headcount of these ‘factories’ to more than 400 professionals.
Garanti BBVA, alongside the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Türkiye (KAGİDER) and Ekonomist, a leading business magazine, is organizing the 18th Women Entrepreneur Competition in Türkiye. Candidates hoping to inspire other women with their success stories have until November 15, 2024 to submit their entries by filling out the form available at www.garantibbvakadingirisimci.com.
Deep learning is a subset of IA within the broader concept of machine learning, so both concepts have a good deal in common, though also differences. Deep learning uses neural networks to draw complex conclusions in a human-like manner. Meanwhile, machine learning is able to make predictions from patterns, although it requires a higher level of human input.
David Puente has been heading up Client Solutions at BBVA for five years. It is an area which, in his words, “drives growth and innovation” at BBVA. He is tasked with developing the value proposition for private and corporate clients, as well as non-clients. His remit includes overall product design, customer experience, relationship and distribution model, as well as building new capabilities and exploring new business opportunities.
Neural networks, natural language processing, machine learning... AI is an essential partner for BBVA to help its customers manage their savings, manage their investments, analyze their consumption and plan for their next outgoings.
Machine learning has no end of business applications. Consumers and citizens stand to benefit from this technology, which lets them manage their financial health, streamlines their digital processes, or makes their online experience smoother across multiple platforms, among other uses. A basic premise has emerged from this boom: there is nothing mysterious or magical about artificial intelligence (AI), and nor should it seem so. For more complex algorithms, data scientists develop tools to help us understand how they make their decisions.
Artificial intelligence is increasingly mainstreamed in society and used to make decisions that affect people´s lives in areas such as their workplace or the justice system. This presents the challenge of biased algorithms, which are mainly caused by biases or distortions in the training data. Proposals are already in place that caution against bias and seek to mitigate its harmful impact on society.
Opening imagen created with Midjourney (AI)
BBVA has taken a firm step toward the future by expanding its Data University program, which now features new courses on generative artificial intelligence (generative AI). As part of the agreement signed with OpenAI, the bank is calling on its employees, from data scientists to any other member of the team, to apply the latest advances in AI, machine learning and advanced analytics in developing innovative financial products. BBVA’s Data University has already impacted more than 50,000 employees in 6 years, of whom nearly 5,000 have completed specialized courses. BBVA is also looking to strengthen its educational ecosystem through partnerships with prestigious institutions such as the University of Navarra, Telefónica and Coursera.
BBVA has chosen Telefónica Tech to boost the cybersecurity of its operations on a global scale with the incorporation of the most advanced technologies in artificial intelligence and process automation for the prevention of cyber threats. In addition, this alliance involves the creation of a new specialised centre in Mexico, which will function as a mirror of BBVA's existing Global Cybersecurity Centre in Spain. The combination of the two will provide comprehensive and uninterrupted coverage for the entire Group.
Online courses promoted by universities, business school training and even materials offered by technology giants are some of the ways to learn to master artificial intelligence. Beyond programming, AI professionals can receive training in other areas, such as computational linguistics and ethics. Thanks to this trend, Europe currently has over 120,000 professionals who are highly qualified to work in AI.
BBVA AI Factory, BBVA's artificial intelligence hub, has been honored for the third time by Global Finance magazine as one of the leading innovation labs in the financial world. BBVA is the only Spanish bank featured in this ranking, which highlights "excellence" in creating solutions that address current challenges in the financial sector.
BBVA conducted a study in Spain and Mexico that shows that customers who use its main financial health tools save 11 percent and 20 percent more, respectively. But how did the bank ensure that they eliminated the influence of other variables when calculating this savings? To do so, the bank used two machine learning models and causal inference, a statistical methodology that detects complex cause-effect relationships.
Throughout its history, BBVA has played a prominent role in the economic and social development of Spain, propeling its progress and constantly adapting the bank in order to be at the forefront of innovation and technology. Since it was first established in the mid-19th Century (1857), BBVA has been known for being a visionary bank, with the ability to anticipate the trends that will change the financial industry and the future needs of its customers. Some of its noteworthy milestones include financing the construction of the Madrid subway system; being the first bank to allow women to do their banking without the permission of a legal guardian through the creation of the Women’s Bank; and being the first bank to introduce credit cards as a payment method. A track record that has established BBVA as a crucial ally to face future challenges and thus encourage economic growth and the transformation of businesses.
Building a business is not easy, yet it happens to be one of the most important decisions in life that many people will ever make. And while we generally talk about challenges in this process, such as the availability of capital, the macroeconomic climate of a country, cash flow management or registration and licensing, little is said about one of the biggest challenges: mental health care.
Garanti BBVA’s crypto app provides a secure and user-friendly crypto wallet and trading experience, while adding new tokens to its asset portfolio every day. The app currently offers support for Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), USD Coin (USDC) and Avalanche (AVAX), and now users will be able to transfer and store their Chiliz (CHZ) over the Ethereum network.
Garanti BBVA Digital Assets, the first initiative of Garanti BBVA Financial Technologies Inc., is now offering crypto wallet service on its mobile platform. This marks the first time in Turkey that a bank subsidiary has developed and implemented a crypto currencies wallet with its own resources. Garanti BBVA Digital Assets now allows customers to transfer and store bitcoin (BTC), Etherum (ETH) and USD coin (USDC) assets on its mobile platform, Garanti BBVA Crypto.
Generative artificial intelligence tools are evolving rapidly: in just two months, ChatGPT reached 100 million users. Other platforms such as TikTok took at least nine months. To grasp the potential of these applications, we first need to understand the large language models that drive them.
Neural networks are transforming technology. Natural-language processing, voice recognition and artificial vision are just some of the applications of a sector that will be worth $1bn by 2030. The technology, first conceived decades ago to emulate the human brain, has boomed in recent years.
The emergence of tools like ChatGPT has transformed conversational interactions between humans and machines. Generative AI's ability to provide accurate and contextually relevant responses makes it particularly valuable for automated customer service environments, such as chatbots and virtual avatars.
Web components are a set of features that allow the creation of reusable elements in web pages and applications. When developing, you get fast and efficient delivery of consistent, high-quality user interfaces for all platforms. But creating web components can be tedious and repetitive, so how can we improve it? The use of some tools or libraries such as Lit makes it possible to speed up and optimise the process.
In a bid to protect its customers from telephone scams, Garanti BBVA has launched a new feature in its mobile app to reassure customers that the calls they receive from the bank are being made via the bank’s secure channels. When taking a call from somebody claiming to represent the bank, the customer can track whether the caller is genuinely from Garanti BBVA and can see the name of the caller on the alerts screen in the mobile app.
After years at the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI)-based research and projects, BBVA has taken another big step forward in the use of generative AI in its main markets. Not only has it prioritized around 100 projects to be developed with various tools that employ this new technology, it has also signed a strategic agreement with OpenAI —the creator of ChatGPT— to start deploying this cutting-edge tool among its employees. The aim is to explore, in a safe and responsible way, how generative AI can expedite processes, improve productivity and foster innovation thanks to its abilities to create text and images and process information, among other features.
Garanti BBVA, a leader in digital payment innovation in Türkiye, has introduced the country's first biometric verification card, the Bonus Platinum Biometric Card. This groundbreaking product, described as a "game-changing technology" in payment systems, enables users to make quick, unencrypted, and secure payments by scanning their fingerprints. It also allows for limitless secure contactless payments, setting a new standard in the industry.
Digital channels have become the main way banks interact with their customers, both to check information and to carry out any kind of transaction. In this context, biometrics are gaining ground as they are a safe way to verify that customers are who they say they are. “At BBVA, there are over 40 use cases on a group level in which customer identity must be identified by biometrics, one of the most secure ways to prevent fraud,” said Natalia Ortega, Global Head of Financial Crime Prevention at BBVA.
BBVA completed a successful pilot test of distributed execution of quantum algorithms across multiple conventional servers in the AWS cloud. BBVA's pilot, one of the first of its kind in the financial sector, provides the bank with a proprietary architecture to further explore the use of quantum computing in complex financial tasks.
Payments infrastructure company EBA CLEARING successfully completed the first pan-European proof of concept for the R2P (Request To Pay) service. This digital messaging service is designed to streamline collection processes and can help boost instant transfers and electronic billing in the region. BBVA and seven other multinational payment service providers took part in the trial. They proved capable of exchanging payment requests in milliseconds.
Garanti BBVA Digital Assets will shortly be offering Avalanche c-chain support for AVAX coins to users of its Garanti BBVA Crypto mobile platform.
BBVA is a founding member of the Quantum Safe Financial Forum (QSFF), a safe space for collaboration between European and US financial firms promoted by Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). The alliance aims to foster the creation of new technological systems within the financial industry that are safe, secure and resilient to malicious attacks that rely on quantum computing.
The international publication has granted two ‘Innovators Awards’ to BBVA for its crypto asset service in Switzerland and for an automated process the bank has developed to guide the creation and application of machine learning models for the early detection and management of debt.
Garanti BBVA, in its role as a supporter of startup growth and investment, has revealed the latest cohort of startups joining its renowned Garanti BBVA Partners Tech Program.
Exoticca, a leading company in the digitization of big-ticket travel, has announced the signing of a €4 million finance agreement with BBVA Spark. This loan agreement will facilitate the company's expansion in Latin America. The financing is supported by the European Union and the European Investment Fund under the InvestEU Fund program.
In the past two years, BBVA added 7,187 professionals in the data and technology field to its workforce - a figure it plans to increase in 2024 with 2,700 new hires. Of this amount, 1,225 will take place in Spain for the bank’s headquarters in Madrid, Bilbao and Barcelona. Technology talent has become a key aspect of the Group’s digital strategy.
In 2023, 63 percent of programmers introduced artificial intelligence (AI) tools to their work routine. Optimizing repetitive processes, detecting errors early and suggesting alternative code are some of the uses that have made this technology the ideal working partner for developers. This lets them focus on the more creative and complex tasks.
The global financial services group Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria, S.A. (BBVA) signs a Strategic Whole Portfolio Agreement with Cisco. The agreement gives BBVA access to Cisco’s full software portfolio, world-class technology and Customer Experience (CX) services, supporting the bank’s digitization journey. Five-year agreement enables BBVA to integrate continuous innovation into daily operations, enhancing speed, agility, and offering the latest in digital financial services.