Garanti BBVA Partners Named Among Global Finance’s Best Financial Innovation Labs
Global Finance’s awards assess the innovation structures shaping the future of financial services. Garanti BBVA Partners has been recognized in Global Finance’s World’s Best Financial Innovation Labs 2026 in the Financial Services Company (Working With External Startups and Scale-ups) category, placing it alongside the innovation labs of the world’s leading financial institutions.
Garanti BBVA Partners was set up to support the growth of technology startups, create opportunities for collaboration between startups and the bank, and help innovative solutions find traction in the business world. The program connects startups with Garanti BBVA’s expertise, banking experience, infrastructure, and wider ecosystem, offering mentorship, training, collaboration opportunities, communications support, and ecosystem connections. Beyond helping startups grow, it also creates the conditions for their technologies to meet real business needs and for potential partnerships with the bank to develop.
Garanti BBVA Executive Vice President Sibel Kaya said the recognition reflects international endorsement of the bank’s long-term approach to the entrepreneurship ecosystem and its model of creating value together with technology startups. She said Partners Tech is not just an acceleration program but a structure that brings entrepreneurs’ innovative ideas and technologies together with Garanti BBVA’s knowledge, experience, and ecosystem. “Recognizing that entrepreneurs’ needs are not limited to financing, we accompany them on their development journey with mentorship, training, collaboration opportunities, and our strong ecosystem connections,” she said.
The 10th Partners Tech cohort is under way
The 10th cohort of the Garanti BBVA Partners Tech Program features Eriklabs, Text2Test, Rudiq, Freya, and Fraud.com. Over six months, the startups will receive tailored mentorship, opportunities to collaborate with Garanti BBVA and its subsidiaries, advertising and PR support, training and seminars, office space, and advantageous banking products and services. Eriklabs and Text2Test focus on AI-powered software testing, Rudiq offers solutions for digitalizing real-world assets using blockchain, Freya develops AI voice assistants for corporate clients, and Fraud.com provides identity verification, transaction monitoring, and fraud prevention solutions for banks and financial institutions. Running since 2015, the acceleration program has supported 65 technology startups to date.