Metaps, an app monetisation firm, has completed a $36 million Series C round of financing, proceeds of which will be used to improve the company’s artificial intelligence technology and expand its free online payment service Spike.

New business partnerships were also formed during the funding, which was headed by stakeholders in Japan and an unnamed Silicon Valley venture capital firm, but details about them will not be revealed until later in the year.

In March 2013, the firm raised $10.6 million from Fidelity Growth Partners Japan along with existing investors.

Metaps offers an SDK which helps developers incorporate in-app offers to increase user engagement and revenues. It is also increasingly focusing on improving app marketing by learning the patterns of user activity through AI.

The firm wants to continue to “advance automation and increase efficiencies across all types of businesses utilising big data using data analysis, pattern recognition, future forecasting” and by improving its AI system, it said in a statement.

The infrastructure of the platform it offers “has expanded to reach over 100 million app users through their network, which includes apps that have been downloaded a total of over 1.2 billion times,” it added.

It now wants to make the platform accessible to developers for all smart devices, not just phones, with the aim of reaching 10 per cent of the world’s population (800 million people) by 2016.

CEO Katsuaki Sato believes “the timing was right to bring in more outside funding to help our AI and financial services initiatives reach the next level.”

“We are already a trusted monetssation partner for app developers worldwide, and we are expanding into a solutions provider for all e-commerce companies and smart device developers,” he said.

As for Spike, which has over 50,000 registered users, Metaps wants it to become “an all-encompassing financial service and not limit itself to online payments.”