BBVA and Sella enter into an Open finance strategic partnership

By Joy Dumasia

The Spanish multinational banking group BBVA and the Sella group have entered into a strategic partnership for Open finance. The above will allow BBVA to offer its foreign customers willing to operate in Italy and those of the newly launched digital bank a series of local payment services such as F24, postal bills, CBILL and pagoPA.

The agreement provides that Banca Sella makes available to the Spanish financial group its products through the APIs (Application Programming Interface) managed through the platform of Fabrick, a company operating internationally to foster Open finance.

For the Sella group, therefore, this is one of the first initiatives in the “Banking As A Service” strategic area, which aims to enable and expand, in an innovative way, the range of services offered to corporate, fintech and international financial institutions. The agreement, moreover, is also part of a broader cooperation context that sees the Fabrick platform contributing to the International Open finance projects of BBVA.

The project, sharing the know-how of the three players to meet the new needs of the global market, has allowed BBVA to optimize technological investments, implementation times, organizational impacts and accelerate time-to-market.

Javier Lipúzcoa, Head of BBVA Digital Banking in Italy, said: “The strategic alliance with Banca Sella and Fabrick, a Sella group company recognized for its experience and credibility in the Italian market, was a powerful element in launching our tax payment proposal for Italian users. This alliance makes our pioneering vision, in which we combine our strengths and experience to provide our customers with the best possible experience tangible.”

Andrea Tessèra, Head of Banking As A Service at Banca Sella, said: “Banca Sella was among the first companies to seize the opportunities of open banking and to offer innovative tools in As A Service mode thanks to the advantage of being part of and encouraging an open financial ecosystem. The partnership with BBVA, one of the most established financial institutions globally, is a vital part of our strategy that aims to enable third parties with an open finance perspective.”