N26, a German challenger bank, has increased its Series D round to $470m, boosting its valuation to $3.5bn.
The mobile bank previously closed its Series D in January 2019 on $170m and had valued the business at $2.7bn.
All of the previous Series D investors extended their contributions in N26. The backers include Insight Venture Partners, GIC (Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund), Tencent, Allianz X, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, and Greyhound Capital.
With the increased company valuation, N26 claims to be the highest valued German startup and one of the biggest in Europe.
This batch of funding will be used to drive expansion in Europe, the US, and Brazil, as well as the development of new features. One of these new services will be Shared Spaces, which helps users create sub accounts with up to 10 people in order to ease the splitting of payments and bills.
Since the company launched in 2015, it has grown to serve over 3.5 million customers across 24 European markets and support 16 million transactions each month. Over the past 12 months, the company has tripled its workforce to over 1,300 employees.
Last week, the company launched its mobile banking app into the US, marking its first market outside of the US. N26 now has plans to release in Brazil and hopes to reach a total of 50 million customers worldwide in the coming years.
Valar Ventures general partner James Fitzgerald said, “The notion that the best consumer startups are all born in Silicon Valley is increasingly outdated.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. We see customers all around the world waiting for banking to change and are thankful to support N26 on their journey to transform retail banking globally.”
The close of the round has brought N26’s total equity raised to $670m. Prior to this round, the company closed its Series C on €110m last year to support its growth into the US market.
Copyright © 2019 FinTech Global
