[jelmerdejong]

BBVA is expanding, first the acquisition of (Bank) Simple [0] and now Holvi.

One thing i'm not sure about: is this a sign that BBVA has a good digital strategy by acquiring these neo-banks. Or does this show that a stand-alone neo-bank is not a easy / realistic thing to accomplish (yet)? Most, if not all, neo-banks struggle to get real customers (e.g. regular users, outside the 'TechCrunch PR wave group') and are either acquired (BBVA doing well here) or becoming software vendors to banks, vs a challenger to banks (e.g. Moven (bank) [1]).

[0] http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/bbva-buys-banking-sta... [1] https://newsroom.accenture.com/industries/banking/accenture-...

[Mahn]

Perhaps these acquisitions are not so much a bet on "neo-banks", but rather serve as an insurance to make sure they never grow large and pose a threat?

[ganeumann]

BBVA barely had a footprint in the US before the Simple acquisition so it wasn't insurance, it was one of the cheapest ways to enter the US market.

[stevedomin]

BBVA Compass(1) was 30th in the ranking of the 50 largest banks in the U.S. (SNL financial data from 2013), definitely not the biggest one but it's harsh to say that it barely had any footprint.

(1) BBVA bought Compass in 2007

[ganeumann]

Sure, but bank size falls off very quickly after the biggest four. Compass is about 3% of the size of JPMorgan by assets (source: http://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/03/ranking-the-50-big...), and 10% of the size of JPMorgan by branches (http://www.usbanklocations.com/bank-rank/number-of-branches....). Theirs are less than 0.7% of bank branches in the US, compared to JPMorgan's 6.6% of branches.

You can disagree with whether this means they had barely any footprint or not, I guess that's semantics, but it certainly makes more sense that they would buy them to expand, not to get rid of a competitor.

[jackgavigan]

They also invested in Atom Bank (a new mobile-only bank in the UK): http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/24/uk-mobile-only-atom-bank-pi...

[phillc73]

Pushing the big green NEXT button as many times as I could on the Atom Bank website[0] was one of the more satisfying things I've done this afternoon.

[0] https://www.atombank.co.uk/

[decentrality]

I think BBVA might be trying to aquire their way out of digital oblivion. What I've seen of their customer interfaces are some of the worst I've experienced.

[decentrality]

Their (non-digital) services are awesome. Only digital oblivion being solved here... their institution itself seems superior to most I've experienced... except being digitally horrible

[iamzenitraM]

Well, I've found the contrary: at least on Spain their app/web/ATM experience is much better designed than other banks with atrocious UX and WebView-based mobile apps.