BBVA Partners with Amazon Web Services to Advance Digital Transformation

Bilbao, Spain-based bank BBVA has partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to further advance its adoption of the cloud. In a deal inked today, AWS will become the financial services firm’s “preferred” cloud infrastructure provider and help it migrate its workflows onto a proprietary “secure, flexible and scalable cloud-based solution,” according to BBVA.

To illustrate the benefits of moving towards more online, digital operations, the bank notes that its transaction load has jumped from 90 million per day in 2006 to nearly 550 million today. “In 2017 they will be prepared to manage one billion transactions a day in real time, confirming BBVA’s swift response to changes in customers’ needs and expectations,” said BBVA about its new partner in a statement.

Naturally, cloud implementation is more challenging in the financial sector than some others due to red tape. But the AWS relationship has made it easy to also work closely with regulators to ensure compliance.

“The digital transformation of our business means that our technology platforms must be prepared to face an exponential transactions growth and cloud computing technologies have much to contribute in this direction,” said Ricardo Moreno, global head of engineering at BBVA. “Working with AWS and having them accompany us on this journey — not just with their products but also with their expertise — will accelerate our transformation.”

In addition to expanding its use of AWS cloud ecosystem — which BBVA had been using to run its analytics application for retailers its “Commerce 360” program — the partnership will lead to the creation of what is being called its Cloud Community. This will be used to improve knowledge sharing while enhancing security, other standard, and compliance.

For AWS, it sees the agreement as highly beneficial to its goal of further expanding in the banking world. It plans to take the feedback and lessons learned from BBVA to tweak its offering to other financial services firms.

“We are thrilled to be working with BBVA, one of the world’s leading innovators in the financial sector,” said Mike Clayville of Amazon Web Services. “By using the AWS Cloud, financial organizations can drive innovation while maintaining high levels of security, compliance and data privacy. We are excited to continue helping BBVA on its transformation journey and supporting them to drive innovation for their end customers.”