BBVA reports more than 1m downloads of HCE mobile wallet app

More than one million consumers have downloaded BBVA’s host card emulation (HCE) mobile wallet since it launched in June 2014. The Spanish banking group is now expanding the service to Turkey and expects more than five million customers to be using it by the end of 2016.

BBVAThe BBVA Wallet service is currently live in Spain, Mexico, Chile and the US. The launch in Turkey will be with Garanti Bank, under the BonusFlas brand.

“The total number of wallet downloads at the end of Q3 2015 stood at 1.057 million,” the bank says. “Spain had 850,000 downloads, while Mexico had 164,000 just three months after a July launch. Chile and the US are at a very early stage at 36,000 and 7,000 respectively. The pace of growth is accelerating to the extent that BBVA now forecasts that the wallet app will be downloaded at least five million times by the end of 2016.

“In Q3 2015, Wallet was downloaded 358,000 times compared to 87,000 in 2014 — a 311% increase. Data shows that Wallet customers use their card more and spend more. In Spain, Wallet users make 11 card purchases each month, 22% more than plastic users. They also spend 18% more on average each month.”

New features

“Garanti’s BonusFlas has new features which will eventually launch in other Wallet territories,” BBVA adds, “including the ability to enrol in loyalty programmes in-app, increase your credit limit and receive retailer offers based on geolocation.”

“With BBVA Wallet offering a safe, innovative and easy-to-use alternative to cash and plastic and with over 80% of the world’s payments still in cash, we believe there’s a big opportunity to move from one to five million downloads by the end of 2016,” says Mehmet Sezgin, global head of payments for BBVA.

“One million BBVA Wallet downloads is the beginning of a journey. I firmly believe that people using plastic will be in a minority by 2020. As the only bank operating digital wallets in five countries around the world, we are at the forefront of the major transformation from plastic to mobile.”

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