Wow. I did not see this one coming. According to TechCrunch (and a press release I just got my hands on) Cambridge Mass based SCVNGR has raised another $15 million in funding putting their total money raised at $20 million. This round is led by European VC firm Balderton Capital and includes existing investors Google Ventures and Highland Capital. Balderton partner Barry Maloney will be joining SCVNGR’s board. Their last round of investment was back in December of 2009.

“SCVNGR has big ambitions and has been executing against some pretty aggressive benchmarks,” said Maloney. “Seth Priebatsch and crew are mashing up gaming, social and mobile in ways that are changing the way consumers live and businesses attract, reward and increase loyalty with their customers.”

I’m still a little blown away by the $100 million valuation, very impressive. Back in October SCVNGR had crossed the 500k users mark, but we have had no updates on user growth since then.

In comparison Foursquare raised $20 million back in July with a reported valuation of $95 million, and at that time had just crossed the 2 million user mark. Looks like Seth is on to something with this challenges. Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley also took a nice chunk of change out of the round for himself, I wonder if Seth got a little taste? My guess absolutely not, but weirder stuff has happened.

“This partnership with Barry Maloney and Balderton Capital positions us perfectly to take the game layer mainstream in 2011. Their operational and global experience is just what we need to accelerate the SCVNGR growth curve even further,” said Seth Priebatsch, Chief Ninja of SCVNGR.

“That and some great new stuff we’re rolling out over the coming months. It’s all quite awesome… and will likely be bright orange.”