Spain's CaixaBank has signed on to the European Innovation Council (EIC) Corporate Partnership programme, working with a handful of startups on joint projects.
The European Commission's main agency for supporting innovation, the EIC funds or subsidises more than 5000 firms. CaixaBank's Payments & Consumer unit has handpicked several of these to work with on pilots for useful projects at the bank.
Irish outfit Sedicii is developing a global identity verification network to speed up the registration process for businesses that want to become CaixaBank customers.
Italian startup You are my guide is using AI to help companies improve their marketing return on investment by better understanding their customer.
Finally, Catalonia-based Verbio uses AI to automate call centre customer services. The firm's technology can identify the reason why a customer is calling, obtain additional information to connect to the company's systems and resolve the reason for the call.
Juan Gandarias, CEO, CaixaBank Payments & Consumer, says: "The European Innovation Council's selection procedure enables us to access high-level innovation throughout Europe and select some projects according to our own criteria, capacity and needs, with which we hope to work together to improve the efficiency of our services."