Santander, through the Santander InnoVentures Fund, has announced a $5 million investment in mobile payment and loyalty provider MyCheck, in return for a minority equity stake in the business, kicking off MyCheck’s Series B funding round.

MyCheck, founded in Israel in 2011, is an app focusing on Point-of-Sale integration and user experience.

The funds from Santander will be used to “accelerate MyCheck’s international expansion, especially across the US and Western Europe, bolster sales and marketing, and enhance business intelligence capabilities,” the Spanish bank said in a statement.

Although it started off as a consumer app, MyCheck has evolved into a B2B model for restaurant chains to offer a mobile payments and loyalty platform.

Customers can check into a restaurant and pay with their smartphones while the businesses are provided with data about their customers through which they can offer them personal loyalty schemes and offers.

Santander said that MyCheck has seen 320 per cent growth in transaction volumes in the last six months after shifting to a technology platform approach, focusing entirely on enabling the payment experience in private label apps for restaurant groups and chains, and providing ‘MyCheck Inside’ capabilities to other app providers that want to reach the hospitality market.

Its clients include Busaba and Prezzo in the UK, as well as Blockheads and Aroma in the US.

Santander’s $100 million fund was launched in July 2014 “to get closer to the wave of disruptive innovation in the fintech space,” with investments ranging from $100,000 to $10 million.

According to Shlomit Kugler, co-Founder and CEO of MyCheck: “We have already secured hundreds of thousands of users. With Santander’s support we can scale rapidly and capitalise on our leadership position in the hospitality sector.”