BBVA México: The digital love-hate that you cannot ignore
In a plot twist that no one, but absolutely no one, on Twitter saw coming, BBVA México has just released the numbers for its first nine months of 2025. And oh, surprise, its digital base grew more than a viral video of kittens. The financial institution, which seems to have more lives than a soap opera character, announced that it added 2.9 million new digital clients. To give you an idea, that is a growth of 81% year-on-year, a percentage that would make any crypto influencer cry with emotion.
With this move, the bank reached a whopping 27 million digital customers. Yes, you read that right. The main bank operating in Mexico now proclaims itself, with all the attitude, as the largest fintech in the country. The irony of a traditional bank beating the game against ‘disruptive’ startups is as delicious as a Wednesday meme. And it’s not just that people download the app and leave it collecting digital dust. The data shows that adoption is real: on average, each user makes one daily transaction. Basically, they open it more times than we open our Instagram notifications.
The world according to Hugo: Where everything is digital and perfect
According to Hugo Nájera, the general director of retail banking who releases statements as if they were spoilers for a series, 58% of the firm’s total sales were made through digital E2E processes (that’s ‘end to end’ for the uninitiated). In Christian: without having to set foot in a branch and deal with the eternal line. For Nájera, this is not a coincidence, but rather a reflection of the bank’s great strategy to digitize every last cent of its operations.
But where things get really interesting is in the credit card business. The average daily placement of plastics without setting foot in a branch reached 3,200 units directly from the application. If we compare this data with September 2022, when 1,800 cards were placed, we are talking about an increase of 1.7 times. In other words, it grew more than our anxiety on a Monday morning. And in case you were wondering, 43% of all credit cards are now placed completely digitally. The operating model took a 180-degree turn, and there seems to be no turning back.
The jewel in the crown in this narrative was the comparison that Nájera himself made: “This application is like Netflix for banking”. Yes, he said it. Apparently, the app is full of ‘boxes’ that are filled with the content you use, making your experience as personalized as your TikTok feed. “It’s easier, you just have to walk with it,” he concluded, in a phrase that will undoubtedly be studied in future marketing classes.
The controversial renovation: Visionary design or visual nightmare?
While the numbers paint a rosy picture, on social networks the scenario is more of a cocktail of criticism and memes. BBVA Mexico recently relaunched its mobile application, and the response has been… well, let’s say ‘passionate’. Users complain about the design and, above all, the typography. But, in a public relations masterstroke, the bank’s executives have come out to say that it is normal for there to be resistance to change. Basically, the digital equivalent of “trust the process.”
The big bet of this new version is artificial intelligence, promising ultra-specific personalization of services for each client, along with a virtual assistant and operations adapted to the most common uses. Eduardo Osuna, the general director of BBVA Mexico, came out on Thursday afternoon with a message that mixes the confidence of a guru and the hope of a new father: “We migrated a very significant volume of customers to the app and then there is a resistance effect to change, obviously, but I can tell you that you are going to love our application. It is very surprising what can be done.”.
Nájera, for his part, estimated that in a couple of weeks users will get used to the new navigation. Regarding the controversial typography, he revealed that the changes are mainly due to visual complications of older adults. A detail that will undoubtedly make many millennials who also complained about the same thing feel old.
The moral of this story? It seems that in the digital age, you can have a record of users and a barrage of complaints at the same time. Success, it seems, is no longer measured just by numbers, but by the ability to endure online hate with a smile and a Netflix metaphor.
Did you join the record or just the complaints thread? Share this gem of modern contradiction on your networks and discover more stories of digital transformation that defy logic.
