Banco Santander announces two investments in financial technology startups to support digitalization. Santander InnoVentures Fund, based in London, invested five million dollars in the mobile payment and loyalty provider MyCheck and participated in the last fund raising round of Cyanogen, a company that is developing secure and personalized Android based commercial mobile operating systems.

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NEWS
Comunicación Externa.
Ciudad Grupo Santander Edificio Arrecife Pl. 2
28660 Boadilla del Monte (Madrid) Telf.: 34 91 289 52 11
email:comunicacionbancosantander@gruposantander.com
www.santander.com ‐ Twitter: @bancosantander
Santander invests in two technology startups to
speed its digitalization
 Santander InnoVentures Fund invests five million dollars in mobile payment provider
MyCheck, and becomes a strategic investor in Cyanogen, a company that develops
Android commercial mobile operating systems.
London, UK, 1 April 2015. Banco Santander announces two investments in financial
technology startups to support digitalization. Santander InnoVentures Fund, based in
London, invested five million dollars in the mobile payment and loyalty provider MyCheck
and participated in the last fund raising round of Cyanogen, a company that is developing
secure and personalized Android based commercial mobile operating systems.
These investments highlight Santander’s philosophy of collaboration and partnership with
small and startup companies. It strengthens Santander’s position as an enabler for the
pioneers of financial technology, allowing it to address customer needs, while continuing to
build Santander´s growing global digital offering.
MyCheck, founded in Israel in 2011, is reinventing the payment experience in hospitality by
focusing on point‐of‐sale integration and user experience to increase customer engagement
and customer satisfaction. The company has seen 320% growth in transaction volumes in
the last six months. MyCheck allows customers to split a restaurant check between friends,
order food to go or even leave a tip without waiting for a waiter.
The funds from Santander, the first in MyCheck’s series B funding round for which it will
receive a minority equity stake in the business, will be used to accelerate MyCheck’s
international expansion, especially across the U.S and Western Europe, bolster sales and
marketing, and enhance business intelligence capabilities. As part of the deal, MyCheck will
be able to leverage Santander’s expertise and scale, reaching over 100 million retail and
commercial customers across ten main markets in Europe and the Americas.
Cyanogen, headquartered in Palo Alto, California, is the company that develops the
commercial mobile operating system Cyanogen OS and backs the largest open‐source
Android community distribution, CyanogenMod. The company is focused on building an
open OS platform that enables a more open, level playing field for the mobile developer
ecosystem around core services most frequently used by consumers. Through this approach,
Cyanogen expects to spur innovation, improve ecosystem revenue generation, and empower
mobile consumers to choose their default apps and services.

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2
Comunicación Externa.
Ciudad Grupo Santander Edificio Arrecife Pl. 2
28660 Boadilla del Monte (Madrid) Telf.: 34 91 289 52 11
email:comunicacionbancosantander@gruposantander.com
www.santander.com ‐ Twitter: @bancosantander
The investment allows Santander to experiment with new distribution techniques,
applications and services closely integrated with the operating system, which may increase
security, enhance user interfaces and drive new revenue streams. Santander’s customers
will be provided with greater data security and privacy.
Santander intends to work with Cyanogen to find ways to drive commercial adoption of
terminals with Cyanogen OS in its core markets in Europe and Latin America. Cyanogen’s
implementation already allows its partners to distribute smartphones with Cyanogen OS
tuned and optimised for each device. There are over 50 million users of CyanogenMod, the
largest community of open code programme developers for Android, which is backed by
Cyanogen.
This investment is part of Cyanogen´s series C fund raising round that the company recently
completed with a range of investors that include Twitter Ventures, Qualcomm Industries,
Telefónica Ventures and Rupert Murdoch, among others.
Mariano Belinky, Managing Director of the Santander InnoVentures Fund, said: “We
established the InnoVentures fund to support startup fintech companies who are at the
cutting edge of digital delivery of financial services and in MyCheck we have found this. The
investment in Cyanogen presents us with some exciting opportunities to learn and closely
monitor how the operating system market develops, and to be able to react quickly to key
changes in the competitive landscape.”
The Santander InnoVentures Fund was launched in July 2014. Based in London, its
investment objectives have a global remit and build on the bank’s philosophy of
collaboration and partnership with small and start‐up companies. The fund provides fintech
companies with much needed finance while supporting the digital revolution to ensure
Santander’s customers world‐wide, benefit from the latest know‐how and innovations across
the banking group’s geographies.
The fund is 100 per cent owned by Santander UK, but is a self‐standing, specialised,
organisation, fully dedicated to the remit of supporting fintech companies worldwide. The
primary focus is on:
 Digital Delivery of Financial Services – aimed at reinforcing distribution and the
overall customer experience in the new digital environment;
 E‐commerce and Payments ventures;
 Online lending – Ventures using new data sources to provide better access to credit,
including crowd and social funding;
 E‐Financial investments – online systems to distribute financial investment products
with self‐service and planning capabilities organised around the lifecycle; and,
 Big Data Analytics – platforms to leverage financial and non financial information to
provide better services to our customers.
 www.santanderinnoventures.com