Nothing shows BBVA’s ability to harness what was once viewed as a disparate set of national banks around Latin America into a cohesive, integrated banking institution better than the success of its transaction services business.
Led by Eva Rubio, head of global transaction banking, BBVA has been evolving its products and services in this area to meet the needs of local customers throughout the region. It has also leveraged its regional breadth and European headquarters to win business from the growing ‘multi-Latinas’, as well as the multinational companies with businesses operating around Latin America.
BBVA Pivot has been the spearhead of this evolution, with the platform encompassing a range of treasury solutions that enable clients to support international activity and facilitate day-to-day business management. Pivot allows centralized operations in 15 countries and 24 currencies, via ebanking and by app, with transparent reconciliation. The most recent functionality includes a commercial cards module that allows clients access to the company’s cards data and transactions in eight countries.
Pivot is now used by more than 1,000 companies and has processed over 81 million orders within 12 months, with a value of €614 billion. More than 70% of Pivot clients transact in Latin countries for payments, payroll, reverse factoring and account information services.
Meanwhile, BBVA’s Openpay gateway for merchants is operating in Mexico and being rolled out in Colombia, Peru and Argentina, which is helping BBVA to become a key player in the acquiring market in Latin America.
BBVA has been evolving its products and services in transaction services to meet the needs of local customers throughout the region
BBVA has also enhanced its Global Supply Chain Finance platform, which gives both multinational and regional clients the opportunity to automate and integrate payments from several countries with their enterprise resource planning system through BBVA’s direct Swift and H2H channels. In addition BBVA has been working with several fintech partners to provide clients with an additional option of payment financing solution through electronic factoring to suppliers.
BBVA has also been focusing on adding sustainability to its suite of transaction services and this has been resonating with companies in Latin America. For example, in Mexico the bank has been winning mandates based on new supply chain financing models that offer suppliers of large BBVA clients preferential financing conditions if they can demonstrate reductions in their carbon footprint.
More than 1,500 suppliers of Nestlé in Mexico have mobilized more than Ps3 billion ($163 million) through such a facility. BBVA also formalized a new supply finance line with retailer Tiendas Ara in Colombia that allows their suppliers to access cheaper financing alternatives. These suppliers are mainly micro-organizations and small and medium-sized enterprises, and the ability of these providers to access funds in advance of the collection of their invoices and to have access to these resources immediately is a huge logistical improvement to the 130-plus companies covered by the programme.
