Investment Round is our weekly update on which firms have secured new funding, which areas are seeing the most financing, and who is putting up the cash that enables these firms to pushing the capabilities of mobile marketing further.

mBank investing €50m into European fintech
Polish bank mBank is setting up mAccelerator, a fund for financial technology companies in Central and Eastern Europe.

The initiative will see  €50m (£43.2m) invested in fintech startups working on state-of-the-art technological solutions helping financial institutions around the globe to meet the challenges of the fintech era, according to mBank CEO Cezary Stypu?kowski.

During mAccelerators initial phase, mBank will work with the  companies to help them reach critical mass, with its own customers getting first access to the technologies, before helping them to offer their solutions to customers around the world.

The fund will be headed by mBank COO Jaros?aw Mastalerz and Wojciech Chmielewski, director of its strategy department, who will leave the company to lead this new project.

$24.8m IoT investment for Everythng
Evrythng, an enterprise-focused smart product management platform founded in 2011, has closed a $24.8m (£19.9m) Series B funding round, led by Sway Ventures alongside Generation Ventures and Bloc Ventures. These investors join previous Evrythng backers Cisco and Samsung.

The funding will be used to support the company’s growth through partnerships, as well as expansion of its team and development of its IoT platform.

“Digital transformation is rewriting the rules for every consumer products brand. The digitisation of products to drive data intelligence, connect directly with end-users and deliver new business models is now mission-critical,” said Niall Murphy, CEO and co-founder of Evrythng.

“This funding round is a signal of the maturing and adoption of the Internet of Things in the enterprise. We are pleased to be working with world-class investors and enterprise partners to realize our vision of ‘Every Thing Connected’ as the trillions of products made and sold across the world become instrumented and a part of the digital ecosystem.”

Liverpool’s LivingLens lands £1.3m
LivingLens, a provider of video mining and analytics technologies based in Liverpool, has secured £1.3m in funding.

The investment was led by the Angel CoFund – whose involvement with the company dates back to 2014, when LivingLens was involved in the Collider marketing and ad tech accelerator programme – plus as other angel investors, including marketeers and ex-city financiers.

LivingLens plans to use the funding to expand its team, launch operations in the US and push development of its enterprise video analytics technology platform.

“We are now working with some of the world’s largest brands and agencies to help them to get closer to their consumers and drive more value out of consumer video as a valuable source of insight, and expect 2017 to be a really strong year for our business,” said LivingLens CEO Carl Wong.

Bink looking for £25m to cross the pond
Loyalty app Bink is seeking £25m in its Series A round, to fund its expansion outside the UK.

Bink not only acts as an umbrella app for loyalty cards, gathering all accounts and points into a single place, but enables users to pair their credit and debit cards in order to automatically collect points whenever they use the cards to pay.

The company is hoping to use the funding to open New York office by September, ahead of a US launch for the app next spring, reports Business Insider. It also plans to expand into Spain, Germany and South Africa.