BBVA launched a few months ago in the United States and Spain Denizen, the first global bank account for expatriates or people who live or work in more than one country. The service is one of the first examples of what is known as open banking and the deployment of PSD2 payment regulations. Its creator and CEO, Joaquín Ayuso de Paul, explains that Denizen “is the first truly global world bank account for expatriates. While others are trying to facilitate international transfers, Denizen is completely eliminating the need to make transfers. ” Ayuso was the founder in 2006 of one of the most popular social platforms in Spain, Tuenti, which in 2010 sold it to Telefónica for 100 million dollars.
How this will help users
Now, Denizen, created on behalf of BBVA, “helps users access their finances anywhere and pay all their international bills faster and more easily. By providing customers with a unified account and a global ATM card, it is faster and more affordable to obtain instant financial status information, as well as to manage funds internationally. ”
At the moment, this service is available in Spain and the US, but the goal is to expand it to more countries in Europe, including the United Kingdom. “As the UK is preparing to leave the EU, young people and qualified professionals are considering relocating and working in other countries. This is just one example of Denizen’s potential customers, but there are more than 50 million expatriates and 250 million migrants in the world for whom it is relevant, “explains Ayuso.
BBVA, realizes what it means to be digital
The executive explains that he chose BBVA to collaborate because “it is one of the few global banks that realizes what it means to be digital. When I was starting Denizen, I met with several banks, but they all seemed to have an old-fashioned approach to digital, less BBVA. ”
How this benefits startups
The founder of Tuenti, and later of several startups and Kuapay, one of the main providers of mobile payments , considers that one of the main advantages of collaborating with BBVA is that it “provides access to regulators. This means that before launching Denizen, we were able to meet with regulators from different jurisdictions and perform a stress test of our business model. ”
Now “we want to launch Denizen also in the United Kingdom, but due to jurisdictional differences between the US and this country, we are spending a lot of time developing the product to make sure that the consumer experience for the customer in the UK is efficient and spectacular. Beyond the new releases to the market, we will improve the design of Denizen and we are working in San Francisco with a design team to make it a reality. Both the design of the application and the physical bank cards will soon have a completely new design. ”
Denizen uses Apis (tool for data exchange) to connect with the banks where the customer has their money, so the data does not have to travel between each bank in each country, but directly through its platform.
Also published on Medium.