BBVA is expanding, first the acquisition of (Bank) Simple [0] and now Holvi.<p>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]).<p>[0] <a href="http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/bbva-buys-banking-start-up-simple-for-117-million/?_r=0" rel="nofollow">http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/02/20/bbva-buys-banking-sta...</a>
[1] <a href="https://newsroom.accenture.com/industries/banking/accenture-and-moven-join-forces-to-transform-digital-banking-solutions.htm" rel="nofollow">https://newsroom.accenture.com/industries/banking/accenture-...</a>
Fintech has been heating up immensely in Europe. Innovation labs & internal startups within old school banks are scooping up tech talent around the continent, and trying to find innovation partners with any kind of fintech understanding: payments, distributed ledger, know-your-customer-tech, etc.<p>European ranking regulation is forcing banks to open up API's to 3rd parties during next couple of years. Not much is clear at this point as to what it will actually enable, but if there is ever going to be a opening for banking disruption in Europe it would be starting about now.