Lorena Poza Díaz - Bizum

In just ten years, Bizum has become a familiar part of everyday payment behaviour in Spain. What started as a shared initiative by Spanish banks to improve the digital banking experience has grown into a brand many people now use almost automatically. For Lorena Poza Díaz, responsible for communications, marketing and sustainability at Bizum, that familiarity is both a strength and a challenge. The next phase of growth is not only about being known, but about staying relevant.

From Everyday Habit to Broader Relevance

Bizum was created at a moment when banks were facing new competition from neobanks and large technology companies entering financial services. The aim was to offer customers a simple and valuable digital service, while also improving the relationship between users and banks. As Lorena puts it: “Who invented Bizum? Nobody and many people at the same time created Bizum 10 years ago.”

Its first use case, payments between individuals, quickly became part of daily life. The service grew through recommendation: to benefit from Bizum, you needed other people to have it too. That natural network effect helped the brand grow organically and become strongly associated with simple, everyday payments.

For Bizum, brand growth is measured mainly through top of mind, spontaneous awareness, brand evaluation and recommendation. But success also brings a new challenge. The brand has become so familiar that people can start to take it for granted. “Everyday life is very good, but we like them to perceive us as something relevant,” Lorena says.

“Everyday life is very good, but we like them to perceive us as something relevant,”

Consistency as a Growth Driver

One of the main reasons Bizum has been able to grow so quickly is the consistency between what it promises and what people experience. The brand stands for speed, convenience and simplicity, and those values need to be visible in every part of the journey: the product, the user experience, the language and the communication. “If I am telling you that I am fast and that I am convenient, my language has to be fast, it has to be clear, it has to be easy, and the user experience is also that,” Lorena explains.

That principle also shapes innovation. Bizum does not aim to offer the most cutting-edge technology just for the sake of it. Its ambition is to make digital payments easier and more accessible for everyone. Sometimes that means choosing a solution that is technologically simpler, but better aligned with the role Bizum wants to play in people’s lives.

This clarity is becoming more important as the market becomes more crowded. Lorena points to two forms of saturation: advertising saturation and payment-method saturation. Consumers are surrounded by messages, while the payments sector has seen many fintechs, neobanks and alternative payment solutions enter the market. In that context, Bizum needs to be recognised not only as a familiar brand, but as a brand that still offers distinctive value in new situations. As Lorena explains, the challenge is to encourage people to use Bizum beyond the context in which they first came to know it. “The brand is highly considered and valued, but of course, we now have the challenge of saying: hey, in other contexts you also have to try me, and I am no longer only payment between individuals.”

“If I am telling you that I am fast and that I am convenient, my language has to be fast, it has to be clear, it has to be easy, and the user experience is also that,”

Collaborations that make the Value Clear

As Bizum moved into e-commerce, it became clear that simply telling people about a new payment option was not enough. People understood sending money to another person, but paying in an online shop with Bizum required a different explanation. The breakthrough came through collaboration.

When Renfe introduced Bizum as a payment method on its website, the two brands created a campaign built around a shared value: speed. Renfe also provided communication channels close to the actual payment moment, making the message more concrete and relevant. “It was the campaign where things clicked, and more people started saying to us: oh, I have started using Bizum on the Renfe website.”

At the same time, Lorena learned that collaborations only work when Bizum’s own values remain visible. In some partnerships, the brand adapted too much to the other party’s channels or style. The lesson was to find a shared language rather than simply fitting into someone else’s format. “We need to explore a common path of communication and codes where both of us feel comfortable, because if not, what happens is that our users do not read us, they do not perceive that Bizum is there and it will not work.”

This also applies to collaborations with social organisations, such as Fundación Inocente or La Marató in Catalonia. These partnerships offer visibility, but also connect Bizum to positive values such as help and collaboration. For Lorena, that makes them valuable beyond pure reach.

“We need to explore a common path of communication and codes where both of us feel comfortable, because if not, what happens is that our users do not read us, they do not perceive that Bizum is there and it will not work.”

Innovation as the Next Phase of Growth

As Bizum’s original peer-to-peer use case matures, innovation becomes less about improving one familiar behaviour and more about widening the role the brand can play. The next challenge is to introduce new use cases, from e-commerce to in-person payments and digital identity, while keeping the experience recognisably simple. As Lorena explains, the opportunity lies in building a broader relationship with users: “I think the focus is on that moment of innovation that brings us more use cases. So that users have a broader relationship with Bizum.”

In payments, that broader role is shaped by a tension between convenience and confidence. People want the process to feel faster and less visible, but they also want to understand what is happening and stay in control. Digital identity could become one way to connect those needs, especially because Bizum builds on the verification already done by banks. For users, the promise is not just easier access, but a clearer sense of control: “At all times you have that control, and also you do not have to create a password, but with your Bizum identity and your identity in the bank, you already have access.”

This innovation model is also shaped by Bizum’s structure. The company develops a shared base for the banking sector, while banks can build their own additional services on top of it. That creates a common foundation for users, while still allowing individual banks to differentiate. “What we do establish are the common basic services, and from there it is up to the entity to differentiate itself, because in the end they have to compete and offer more services.”

“I think the focus is on that moment of innovation that brings us more use cases. So that users have a broader relationship with Bizum.”

Building Growth through Experience

As Bizum expands beyond peer-to-peer payments, communication needs to move closer to the contexts where people can actually use it. Collaborations, retail media, outdoor and physical activations are becoming more relevant, not simply as extra channels, but as ways to make new use cases understandable at the moment they matter. This marks a shift for a brand that started digitally. Bizum’s communication has naturally focused on online environments, especially as e-commerce became a growth area. But with in-person payments on the horizon, the brand also needs to show up in more physical and hybrid contexts. For Lorena, this is almost the reverse of the path many traditional brands have taken: “We are moving from digital now to what has been the traditional offline world.”

That broader view of experience also shapes Lorena’s advice for brand growth. In a fast-moving and saturated world, brands are often tempted to change strategy too quickly, but brand meaning needs time to build. Positioning, role and voice must be clear, and then they need consistency. For Bizum, the brand is not only built through campaigns, but through every moment in which people encounter or use the service. “You have to give it time and patience because we live in a saturated world and not everything moves that fast, and you have to give it that space to build.”

That also changes the role of marketing. It increasingly connects innovation, data, technology, sales and customer experience, but Lorena warns against making the role too technical. A modern marketing leader needs to understand data and technology without getting lost in every daily metric. For Lorena, the real value lies in keeping a holistic view of the company, the customer and the brand. “In the end, what matters more is the general analysis and not being so down in the specific data point of each day.”

Bizum’s growth story shows how a brand can become part of everyday behaviour by solving a simple problem extremely well. But once a brand becomes habitual, the challenge changes. The next phase is about staying relevant, creating new use cases and protecting the values that made people adopt the brand in the first place: simple, fast and for everyone.

“You have to give it time and patience because we live in a saturated world and not everything moves that fast, and you have to give it that space to build.”