BBVA records substantial increase in sales via digital channels in H1 2018
In the first six months of 2018, BBVA sold more than 10 million units through digital channels.
Digital transformation continues to gain pace at financial services companies, with the latest example provided by BBVA. Today, the bank said it sold more than 10 million units through digital channels in the first six months of 2018, marking a nearly twofold increase from the equivalent period in 2017. With this latest increase, sales via digital channels accounted for 38.6% of total sales in the six months through June, compared to a share of 22.4% a year earlier and 14.6% two years ago.
BBVA notes that the growth was not restricted to a certain region and that rather it has taken place in all of the geographical areas in which the Group is active. In Spain, 42.4% of the units sold in the January-June period were through digital channels compared to 24.9% a year earlier. In Mexico the figure was 32.7%, up from 15.5% a year earlier. In Turkey, the numbers are 40.6% versus 32.1%, whereas in the United States the numbers are 21.7%, up from 17.9%.
BBVA ended June with 25.1 million customers using digital channels, 20.7 million of whom use smartphones to interact with the bank. The bank’s target is to have digital customers represent 50% of the total by the end of the year. BBVA expects that by 2019 it will see mobile customers account for 50% of the total.
Talking of BBVA’s new digital services, let’s note that last week BBVA Compass launched BBVA Compass net cash™ online commercial banking portal. The platform is special in that it includes features designed to meet the specific needs of clients in the U.S. market.
BBVA Compass net cash™ facilitates the payment initiation process, enabling clients to create multiple payments types on both a one-time and recurring basis from a single screen with only a few clicks. Clients can define specific user permissions, ensuring security in creating and approving payments. The system also allows users to view and download account and transaction data in a robust range of formats, as well as to integrate reports with their own in-house accounting systems.
On top of that, BBVA Compass net cash™ is the point of access for two new industry-leading services that were launched in July, BBVA Compass RealTime Positive Pay™ and BBVA Compass RealTime ARP™. These are fraud prevention tools giving clients information about check and ACH transactions as they occur and allow users to make pay or return decisions regarding those items in real time.
