BBVA launches Open API marketplace

The launch of BBVA API Market comes after the Spanish bank spent more than a year working with developers and businesses to fine-tune the way the Open API service would be delivered. During this time, over 1500 businesses and developers registered with the experimental portal.

“By opening commercially our data and services, BBVA is turning ‘open banking’ – a model that is going to speed up the transformation of the financial industry – into a reality,” says Derek White, global head of customer solutions at BBVA. “Not only are we adapting to EU standard PSD2, which aims to boost competition in the industry, but are actually aiming to become the best platform on which to build new digital experiences. This is a customer-led business opportunity.”

Initially only Spanish customers of BBVA will be able to benefit from the market – but the bank intends to roll the programme out to its US customers later this year, before expanding it further to include Turkey, Mexico, Latin America and beyond.

Companies from anywhere in the world will be able to apply to use the individual customer data sets from Spain to build personalised services with customer permission. There will also be some anonymous aggregated data sets made commercially available – with the data broken down geographically or by sector.

The bank says companies will be able to use the APIs to create new value added services, deliver better user experiences by improving conversion and onboarding processes, manage payments, verify identities, forward notifications or analyse consumer habits and commercial behavior, among other things.

BBVA is already working with IBEX 35 companies in Spain, but also with geomarketing startups such as Geoblink, Carto or Bismart and with management software vendors, such as Anfix, Simplygest and Sage.

Raúl Lucas, head of Open APIs in Spain says the data sets can be used to create new models for customer acquisitions and loan origination, citing as an example the integration of the API into the checkout process to allow customers to finance their purchase of a third party product or service at the point of sale with a BBVA loan.

“The great thing about this business is that we can think up some basic uses, and build a service around those,” he says. “But when we make them available to third parties—the ones who really know their businesses—they come up with uses which would never even have occurred to us.”