The Spanish bank is planning to invest in other financial technology firms. Speaking to Finextra last week, Mariano Belinky, who runs the Santander Innoventures fund, said he expects two additional investment annoucements to be made in the coming weeks, in the mobile and banking infrastructure area. 

MyCheck is a mobile payment startup that allows customers to pay bills and gain loyalty points at big restaurant chains such as Prezzo in the UK and Aroma in the US. 

Launched in July last year,  the Santander Innoventures Fund also potentially offers scale up business assistance to tech companies and access to the 100 million plus Santander bank customers around the world.

MyCheck launched in 2011, initially with a consumer app that seeks to compete with Venmo in the peer-to-peer (P2P) consumer mobile payment space, but it has since branched out into the business-to-business (B2B) arena and secured co-operation deals with UK Thai restaurant Busaba and the Blockheads Mexican chain of restaurants in the US, among others. 

The start-up now operates in the US, UK, Brazil and Israel, where developmental work was carried out.

According to Mariano Belinky, managing director of the Santander Innoventures Fund, it was set up to support startup fintech companies at the cutting edge of digital delivery of financial services (FS). “In MyCheck, we have found this,” he said, adding that the bank is, “investing in services which seek to benefit customers in their everyday financial transactions”.

“MyCheck has already secured hundreds of thousands of users,” says the co-founder and CEO of the firm, Shlomit Kugler. “With Santander’s support we can scale rapidly and capitalise on our leadership position in the hospitality sector. This investment is a validation of MyCheck’s market proposition, its business model, technology and people. We’re proud to have this vote of confidence from Santander and be the first to receive an investment from their Innoventures Fund.”