In 2023, BBVA clients leveraging Bizum for ecommerce completed a total of 16.6 million transactions, enabling instant and free transfers between individuals and increasingly used to pay for online purchases. The aggregate value of these operations reached 685 million euros, up 105 percent from the previous year. December stood out as the peak month, recording more than two million transactions and 98.8 million euros in revenue. Early 2024 followed the trend, with January generating a record 103.8 million euros in turnover.
These figures place BBVA close to a 50 percent share of the overall Bizum activity in ecommerce. In 2023, more than 600,000 individual customers joined Bizum through BBVA, and nearly every metric of merchant activity grew, with the number of active merchants almost doubling to 4,402 during the year. In total, 8,677 ecommerce businesses used this payment solution.
Another option BBVA offers through Bizum is the ability to make donations to nonprofit organizations and the introduction of digital identity verification. The digital identity feature is particularly secure because it minimizes the amount of information shared with third parties and allows the management of data sharing consents. This functionality is slated to be integrated into ecommerce sites that opt to adopt it.
The bank supports companies in integrating this solution into their websites or mobile applications to help drive business growth. One of the main advantages for merchants and providers is the potential to increase online sales by streamlining processes for users. At the same time, the risk of fraud decreases as records are created with certified information and operational costs are reduced by delegating certain tasks to Bizum.