Prafull Kumar

Feb 4, 2025

How BBVA Built An Unstoppable Innovation Engine

When the first iPhone launched in 2007, it signaled the start of a smartphone revolution. Suddenly, phones weren’t just for calls—they were becoming personal computers in our pockets, transforming the way people lived, worked, and interacted. Industries were being reshaped overnight, from retail and entertainment to transportation and communication.

Many banks viewed this digital shift as just another technological wave—an opportunity to launch a mobile app or digitize a few services. BBVA saw something far bigger—a fundamental shift that would redefine banking.

BBVA understood early on that its real competition wouldn’t come only from other banks but from tech giants like Google and Amazon, along with a surge of startups eager to disrupt financial services. While most financial institutions wanted to wait to see what stuck around, BBVA envisioned a future where banking would be powered by technology, data, and seamless digital experiences. It wasn’t just about going digital—it was about reimagining banking from the ground up.

Nearly 18 years since, BBVA is a bank synonymous with innovation. But how did it get here? How did it crack the code of innovation while many others struggled to keep up?

Let’s explore how BBVA built an innovation engine that seems to never run out of fuel.

BBVA’s Innovation Strategy

Instead of being someone who catches up with innovation, BBVA wanted to be at the center of it. The bank took a unique approach to innovation, which would avoid the usual challenges most other banks face. While having an internal team for innovation could produce some results, BBVA wasn’t content with the scale and speed at which they could bring in the innovation.

BBVA designed a self-sustaining innovation process.

Scouting Innovation

By 2009, Silicon Valley was witnessing the rise of innovative financial startups. Customers were beginning to expect fast, mobile-first financial services, just like the ones they enjoyed from tech giants. BBVA quickly realized that to keep up, it had to stay closely linked to these emerging innovations and adopt them at an early stage. Instead of viewing fintechs as competition, BBVA wanted to embrace their speed and open approach to innovation.

The first step to that was understanding the startup ecosystem— which fintech companies were disrupting the space, how fintech companies operated, and which of them had the potential to reshape banking. But building these relationships from scratch—one startup at a time—was not optimal. Instead, BBVA took a smarter approach: investing in funds that were already scouting and backing promising fintech startups. This move gave BBVA early access to emerging companies and invaluable insights from seasoned venture investors.

However, BBVA soon realized that tracking startups alone wasn’t enough. Observing from the sidelines meant it could see where a fintech was headed, but it had no control over the direction. Passive observation wouldn’t allow BBVA to experiment, collaborate, or guide fintech innovation in a way that aligned with its long-term vision. BBVA needed more than visibility—it needed influence. Direct investments gave BBVA a seat at the table, enabling it to form deeper relationships, test ideas, and strategically integrate fintech solutions into its banking ecosystem.

In 2012, BBVA made its first direct investments in several well-known early-stage venture funds in Silicon Valley. The goal was clear: stay ahead of fintech trends, learn from industry experts, and use those insights to fuel the bank’s transformation.

However, even this approach had its limits. While venture fund investments provided valuable exposure, BBVA was still one step removed from the startups. It needed a more hands-on approach—one that would allow it to identify startups aligned with its specific business challenges and assess their potential for collaboration. This was the beginning of BBVA Ventures, a dedicated corporate venture arm that enabled direct investments in startups, fostering closer partnerships and driving meaningful innovation in banking.

With BBVA Ventures in place, they faced a roadblock — corporate investors weren’t very popular with startups. At the time, large financial institutions were often seen as slow-moving and as gatekeepers to fast-paced innovation. By the time BBVA learned about a breakthrough technology, other investors had already secured funding rounds, partnerships, or strategic deals, limiting its ability to engage.

As a solution, in 2016, BBVA transformed BBVA Ventures into an independent investment firm called Propel Ventures. This move gave the team full autonomy to operate like a true venture capital fund—similar to the well-established players in Silicon Valley. With this independent structure, BBVA could now secure investments in the most promising startups, including DocuSign, Coinbase, and Neon (a Brazilian digital bank). These investments not only strengthened BBVA’s position in the fintech community but also accelerated its own internal innovation, bringing cutting-edge technologies into its banking ecosystem faster than ever before.

Attracting Innovation

Another pillar of BBVA’s innovation strategy was BBVA Open Talent, a global fintech startup competition launched in 2009. Its primary objective was to discover and support innovative technology solutions in financial services.

Over 11 editions, the competition attracted more than 6,000 startups from over 90 countries and engaged with 750 executives.

For BBVA, Open Talent became a pipeline for innovation, bridging the gap between startups and traditional banking. It reinforced BBVA’s belief that the future of financial services would be driven by collaboration, enabling breakthrough ideas to scale and reach the market in ways that conventional institutions often struggled to achieve on their own.

Recognizing the growing needs of high-growth startups, BBVA evolved the program into BBVA Spark in 2022. Spark expanded beyond fintech, offering tailored financial solutions, including credit, banking, and advisory services, to support startups at every stage of their journey. But its true impact lay in how it brought external innovation inside BBVA, ensuring that startup-driven ideas and technologies actively shaped the bank’s own transformation.

Purpose-driven Innovation

For BBVA, the true measure of innovation isn’t just technology—it’s how well it serves people. To create meaningful solutions, BBVA built specialized teams to deeply understand customer challenges. In 2017, BBVA launched the Behavioral Economics Discipline, a dedicated team focused on understanding how people make financial decisions.

BBVA's Global Behavioral Economics team.

One of its early breakthroughs transformed how credit cards were presented to the bank’s customers.

Traditionally, banks list credit card features in charts, leaving customers to choose which option suits them best. BBVA took a different approach—highlighting which customer profiles typically preferred each card. This made the decision-making more relatable. This simple shift made choosing the right card significantly easier, proving that innovation isn’t always about adding features but about removing friction.

Fostering in-house innovators

Innovation isn’t just about technology for BBVA, it’s about making its people think differently, challenge the status quo, and push boundaries. To embed this mindset into its workforce, BBVA reinvented corporate learning, transforming it from a traditional training model into a gamified, merit-based system that fosters creativity and innovation.

In 2016, BBVA launched the Ninja Program, an unconventional learning initiative designed to encourage employees to continuously upskill—not just to perform better in their roles, but to think and act like innovators. Unlike standard corporate training, the Ninja Program allows employees to curate their own learning path by choosing from a variety of training activities. But here’s where it gets exciting—every completed task earns them Ninja Points across five key areas: communication, learning, teamwork, experience, and community. As they accumulate points, they unlock new levels, advancing through the program just like in a video game.

But true innovation demands mastery, and BBVA sets a high bar. The Black Belt, the program’s most prestigious rank, is a test of exceptional skill, perseverance, and out-of-the-box thinking—a challenge so demanding that, to this day, only ten employees have conquered it.

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Complementing the Ninja Program, BBVA Camp focuses on reskilling and upskilling employees in strategic areas, ensuring that the bank’s workforce is always at the forefront of technological advancements.

Together, these programs form BBVA’s engine for continuous transformation, equipping employees with the tools and mindset to shape the future of banking.

By turning learning into an engaging, self-driven experience, BBVA is shaping a workforce that doesn’t just adapt to change but drives it—a critical factor in maintaining its edge as an industry innovator. This approach ensures that BBVA employees aren’t just keeping up with technological shifts; they’re thinking differently, experimenting boldly, and contributing to the bank’s ongoing transformation in ways that traditional learning models could never achieve.

The impact of all these investments in technology, people, and research can be witnessed in the unique and global-first innovations that BBVA launched in the past few years.

AI-Powered Decision Making

BBVA believes that banking should be as smart as the technology we use every day. It leveraged AI, machine learning, and big data to create intelligent solutions that simplify financial decision-making.

A prime example is BBVA Valora, an AI-powered real estate tool that reimagines how customers navigate property decisions. Instead of forcing buyers and renters to rely on fragmented market information, Valora empowers users with data-driven insights—providing purchase and rental price estimates, negotiation guidance, and neighborhood insights. When it launched in September 2018, the tool attracted nearly 250,000 visits from non-BBVA customers, proving the demand for intelligent, data-backed financial services.

Crowdsourcing financial management

Another example of BBVA’s data-driven innovation is BBVA Bconomy, a tool that transforms personal finance management. Traditional budgeting tools provide static expense tracking, but Bconomy takes it further by assessing financial health and offering personalized improvement plans. For instance, it allows customers to compare their electricity bills with others in the same area, age group, and income level and then suggests cost-saving strategies like switching service providers.

By embedding AI and data analytics into its core offerings, BBVA ensures that innovation isn’t just about digital transformation—it’s about making financial decisions easier, smarter, and more personalized for customers.

Region-specific Innovations

BBVA’s innovation strategy wasn’t just about global transformation—it was about tailoring financial solutions to local challenges. For example, in many Mexican and South American cities, cash is still the primary mode of payment. To help cab drivers collect fares safely and efficiently, BBVA partnered with Uber and Mastercard to launch a digital debit card for drivers.

This innovative solution enables Uber drivers to receive their earnings instantly, providing them with greater financial stability. Additionally, it offers access to financial benefits, such as credit options, and non-financial perks, including fuel discounts and rebates. By designing solutions that fit local market needs, BBVA reinforced its commitment to innovation that drives real-world impact.

What’s Next for BBVA?

BBVA didn’t just adapt to digital transformation—it jumped right in the middle of it, shaping the future as it arrived.

While others saw innovation as a trend to follow, BBVA built it into its DNA. From early fintech partnerships to behavioral economics, AI-driven insights, and a culture of relentless learning, it has continuously redefined what it means to be a modern bank.

But true innovators know that transformation never stops. BBVA’s greatest strength isn’t just the breakthroughs it has achieved—it’s the ever-evolving pipeline of ideas, technologies, and partnerships that ensure the next breakthrough is always within reach.

As fintech landscapes shift, AI capabilities expand, and customer expectations evolve, one thing remains certain: BBVA will continue to push the boundaries of what banking can be.