Spain-headquartered financial services firm Santander committed another $100m to its strategic investment fund, Santander InnoVentures, yesterday, doubling its size to $200m.
Santander launched the London-based fund in mid-2014 with $100m of capital, and it provides funding to early and growth-stage financial technology developers along with connections to the firm’s experts on topics like regulation, operations or technology.
The unit has so far invested in eight companies, including online payment technology provider iZettle, small business lending platform Kabbage, digital wealth management service SigFig and mobile operating system developer Cyanogen.
Mariano Belinky, managing partner of Santander InnoVentures, said: “This commitment allows the fund to continue expanding the work we are doing across geographies and investment themes. It will help us expand our portfolio to exciting geographies like Latin America and explore more opportunities across Europe.
“It will also allow us to explore new and exciting themes around artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive computing, digital banking and others that allow us to further improve Santander’s value proposition to its customers.”
Peter Jackson, head of innovation at Santander, added: “Our $200m total investment, demonstrates the group’s commitment to innovation, and to the role of InnoVentures as a catalyst for transformation, by finding and partnering with technology companies that allows us to bring the next generation of services to our customers, globally.”