Sardine, a behaviour-based fraud and compliance platform for fintechs developed by Coinbase, Revolut and PayPal veterans, has raised $19.5 million in a Series A funding round.
Andreessen Horowitz, NYCA, and Experian Ventures joined the round, with Andreessen Horowitz general partner Angela Strange joining the Sardine board.
Sardine's core technology uses AI to provide a real-time fraud score based on the user’s identity, device, and behaviour patterns at the time of account origination and account funding. It also continuously monitors for fraud during account login, deposits, and withdrawals.
The technology is now used by over 50 firms, including neobanks such as Brex and crypto exchanges Bakkt and FTX, which integrate Sardine’s SDK into their web and mobile apps.
The startup has also now added instant bank ACH transfers for crypto on-ramps, removing the traditional three to seven day waiting period for consumers before they gain access to their funds.
Soups Ranjan, CEO, Sardine, says: "It’s an amazing time, as the very concept of money is being reinvented with the rise of fintech and crypto digital wallets. However, it is still a very frustrating experience for customers that expect to instantly move money from legacy banks into their new fintech, crypto, DeFi, or NFT wallets.
"It is incredibly hard to establish trust in whether someone is using their own bank account to load money into a wallet or a stolen one. Sardine has built a behaviour-based platform which uses tens of thousands of data points about a user’s behaviour and combines that with dozens of data sources, ranging from phone and email to social media and blockchain analytics, to establish a real-time trust score.”