Open Innovation Boost for Banking Apps

Published Jun-13-16

Breakthrough:
A big data open innovation contest generates a number of novel banking applications, including an app that can help users avoid long banking lines.

Company:
BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria), Spain

The Story:

Multinational Spanish banking group BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria) is so convinced by the potential of big data that from time to time it enlists the crowd to help it discover revolutionary new ways to capture value in reams of digital information.

In 2014, BBVA launched its second Innova Challenge, an open innovation competition that allowed the bank to work together with the developer community to innovate with bulk data.

Real Business Activity Data

This second iteration of the contest was something of a milestone for the banking group, because it was the first time in its history that it opened up real business activity data to outsiders. It was keen to promote an open culture of continuous exchange with participants.

In this competition, the Innova Challenge API included a data set in which individual people or businesses could not be distinguished. It covered the cities of Madrid and Barcelona and included details of more than 30 million transactions on more than two million cards in over 20,000 retailers.

Among the information available to participants was demographic origin, age and gender of customers and daily patterns of behavior broken down by hours.

Contest Categories

The open innovation big data challenge was split into three categories with each one offering three awards. The categories were apps for the corporate/public sector, consumer apps and web or visualization.

More than 140 projects were submitted from 19 countries, including Spain, the USA and India. Winners were selected by a jury of five judges.

The top winners in each of the three categories were:

Consumer Apps

The first prize was awarded to Qkly, a travel planner app that helps users avoid waiting in long lines in stores or for pay-services. It makes use of BBVA API information to automatically predict overcrowding and identify optimal times to avoid long lines.

Apps for the Corporate/Public Section

The first prize went to Chances, an application for future entrepreneurs. It provides predictions on whether a business should be successful or whether it needs improvement. The app takes into account such factors as location, busy periods, seasonality and customer types.

Web or Visualization

The top prize was won by BBVA Places. It provides analysis of a number of different aspects, such as the correlation between the density of a business premises in a specific area and the number of transactions performed. The app can help to identify optimal areas for opening a business.

These first prize winners each won 15,000 euros (approximately $USD 16,700) for their creative endeavors.

Other winning apps included Mad4food that recommends Madrid bars, cafés and restaurants, and Quartz, a visualization tool that allows a single data set to be viewed from several perspectives.

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