In his opening keynote at Germany\u2019s biggest FinTech Festival, Kalkan outlined BBVA\u2019s ambition of becoming a full-service digital alternative for customers\u2019everyday financial needs in Germany. \u201cWe are not aiming to be just a payments provider. We are building a bank that allows customers to manage all of their everyday finances under one roof. To that end, we have already launched with an initial universal banking proposition with multiple products across savings, lending and payments; and we will continue to expand our product suite further, \u201d said Murat Kalkan.The bank\u2019s long-term goal is to build a broader proposition across payments, savings, and lending, with credit cards, mortgages, and investments to follow over time.<\/p>\n
Positioned between incumbent and neobank<\/p>\n
In Germany, BBVA offers a fully digital banking model with attractive terms, backed by the scale, experience and regulatory strength of a 169-year-old institution supervised by the ECB<\/a>,\u00a0 with all customer deposits protected up to \u20ac100,000. With 80 million customers worldwide and one of the strongest capital positions in Europe, BBVA combines the best of a traditional universal bank and a neobank: a fully digital user experience underpinned by the technological and institutional strength of a global financial group.<\/p>\n In practice, this means moving quickly on product development while maintaining the standards of a regulated full-service bank. In less than a year, BBVA has built a broad digital product ecosystem in Germany. The offering includes a permanently fee-free interest-earning current account\u00a0 \u2013 a rarity in the market \u2013 with integrated savings functionality and remuneration, a digital lending offer through One Click Loan, the Pay & Plan installment feature. Customers also benefit from flexible fixed-term deposits with up to 3.2% p.a. with multiple maturities up to 5 years, travel insurance, an integration in ChatGPT Apps<\/a>, and a variable long-term interest rate of up to 2.5% p.a. for active customers, ensuring the account remains rewarding well beyond the initial promotional period.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n Retail banking in Europe is becoming increasingly international<\/p>\n This broad product offering reflects a broader strategic vision. At FIBE, Murat Kalkan made clear that European retail banking is undergoing a structural shift: the industry is consolidating, becoming more global and digital, and being reshaped by new platforms and AI that are lowering costs and intensifying competition.<\/p>\n \u201cThe new competition requires significant scale,\u201d emphasized Murat Kalkan, underscoring that BBVA already has that scale in Europe. Germany and Italy are the first two markets where BBVA is rolling out its digital retail banking model in Europe. \u201cWe focus on our strategy, combining the upsides of neobanks, which is the pricing, transparency, attractiveness, and the customer experience, with the trust and products. We are scaling products from our European roots. We already have around 10 million customers in Europe. The scale is already there,\u201d Kalkan added.<\/p>\n Italy serves as an important reference point in that strategy. Over the past four years, BBVA has built a digital bank there with a broad universal banking proposition, ranging from current accounts and credit cards to mortgages and investment products and aiming to reach a million customers in 2026. Germany is accelerating this roadmap and following the same long-term logic. The credit card is the next concrete rollout step this year, while investment products and mortgage lending are expected to follow as part of the long-term roadmap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his opening keynote at Germany\u2019s biggest FinTech Festival, Kalkan outlined BBVA\u2019s ambition of becoming a full-service digital…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[123],"tags":[148],"class_list":{"0":"post-5302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bbva","8":"tag-bbva"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}