German digital bank N26 has raised its Series D funding round to $470 million, valuing the company at $3.5 billion.
The $170 million extension to January's $300 million raise ranks the challenger among the top ten of the most valuable fintechs worldwide.
The new funds were raised from among previous investors in January, including Insight Venture Partners, GIC (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund), Tencent, Allianz X, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, and Greyhound Capital.
Launched in Germany and Austria in January 2015, N26 began as a current account with a Mastercard. It now operates as a fully-featured bank, serving 3.5 million customers in 24 European markets. To date, N26 has raised more than $670 million.
Earlier this month it began to make its app available to 100,000 Americans who signed onto a waitlist, ahead of a full-scale launch in its first market outside of Europe later this summer.
James Fitzgerald, general partner at Valar Ventures based in NYC, says: “The notion that the best consumer startups are all born in Silicon Valley is increasingly outdated. N26 is a prime example of digital innovation moving in the opposite direction, from Europe to the US and beyond."
Alongside the expansion drive, N26 plans to roll out additional features, including a new facility dubbed 'Shared Spaces', which will enable customers to create sub accounts within N26 and share them with up to 10 people for group savings goals.
The firm also expects to make heavy investment in organisational and structural growth, having already tripled its workforce to more than 1,300 employees in the past 12 months.