Sells banks, fintechs and merchants one modular platform for fraud prevention and AML compliance, built on device and behavioral signals and a cross-industry data consortium (Sonar), and since 2025 adds AI agents that triage alerts and draft investigation work under human review.
What is Sardine, and which banks use it?
Sardine, founded in 2020 and based in San Francisco, sells banks and fintechs a SaaS fraud and AML platform: device and behavioral intelligence, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening and AI agents for alert review. It is private; Activant Capital led a $70 million Series C in 2025 that the company said valued it at $660 million, and National Bank of Canada led a $25 million extension in May 2026. None of our 100 US banks is named as a customer in the sources reviewed. Pricing is not published.
Category
Founded
2020
Headquarters
San Francisco, California, US
Ownership
Private; investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Activant Capital (lead of the $70 million Series C in February 2025, which the company said valued it at $660 million), Nyca Partners, GV, Visa, Experian Ventures, Moody's and National Bank of Canada's NAventures, which led a $25 million Series C extension in May 2026 that took total funding to $170 million.[7][9][4][13]
Deployment
SaaS, integrated through APIs and a client-side device and behavior SDK
Pricing
Sales-led enterprise contracts; Sardine describes usage-based pricing for its custom agents · not published
Banks among the 100
0
- Founded in 2020 by former risk and compliance leaders from Coinbase, Revolut, Uber and PayPal, according to CEO Soups Ranjan; early customers named in its 2022 releases were mostly crypto and fintech firms, including FTX, Blockchain.com, Brex and MoonPay.
- Raised $19.5 million (Series A, February 2022), $51.5 million (Series B led by Andreessen Horowitz's growth fund, September 2022, with Visa among participants) and $70 million (Series C led by Activant Capital, February 2025); Bloomberg reported the company said the Series C valued it at $660 million.
- On May 20, 2026 National Bank of Canada signed a multi-year deal to deploy Sardine's device intelligence and real-time risk scoring across its retail, commercial and wealth businesses after a live evaluation, and its venture arm led a $25 million Series C extension that brought Sardine's total funding to $170 million.
- Sardine says more than 450 global enterprises use it (September 2026), up from more than 300 in February 2025; named customers include FIS, Experian, National Bank of Canada, Nubank, GoDaddy and Deel.
- Its bank-facing channels in 2025-2026 run largely through partners: Helix by Q2 for sponsor banks (December 2025), Linker Finance for community banks (March 2026) and Modern Treasury for payments monitoring (June 2026).
- Sardine announced on September 1, 2026 that Forrester named it a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Financial Crime Management Solutions, Q3 2026.
- Pricing is not published; Sardine's custom-agent page describes usage-based pricing without figures.
What does Sardine sell to banks?
| Product | What it does | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Device and Behavior Intelligence[20] | One SDK capturing device and behavioral signals, turned into more than 1,000 risk features, to detect bots, remote-access tools, proxies, emulators and deepfakes; Sardine says it draws on 6.5 billion profiled devices. | Generally available |
| AML Transaction Monitoring[21] | Real-time and rules-based AML monitoring with more than 500 pre-built rules for typologies such as structuring, layering and funnel accounts, plus graph analysis across customers, devices and counterparties. | Generally available |
| Sanctions Screening[22] | Screening against sanctions, PEP and adverse-media sources across onboarding and transactions, with AI screening agents that Sardine says resolve alerts 95% faster. | Generally available |
| Agentic Fraud and AML Ops (AI agents)[7][8][23] | AI agents for KYC onboarding, sanctions screening, transaction-monitoring triage, due diligence, merchant risk, disputes and SAR narrative drafting, first announced with the February 2025 Series C; Sardine says agent decisions are explainable with audit trails and that its sanctions agent proposes decisions for a human analyst to accept or reject. | Generally available |
| Custom Risk Agents[19] | Agents built with Sardine's forward-deployed engineers from a customer's own standard operating procedures, data and guardrails, sold on usage-based pricing. | Generally available |
| Sonar consortium (cross-industry fraud intelligence)[2][5][6] | Sardine's consortium network, launched as SardineX in June 2023 and renamed Sonar in February 2024, sharing risk signals on users and businesses across banks, fintechs and merchants under GLBA and FinCEN 314(b). | Generally available |
| Risk Management for Sponsor Banks[24][10] | A dashboard for sponsor banks to mandate AML rules across fintech programs and monitor onboarding, alerts, transactions and SAR filing trends per program. | Generally available |
| Credit Underwriting[25] | Consumer and business credit decisioning combining bureau, cash-flow, identity and behavioral data, with configurable workflows, backtests and shadow mode. | Generally available |
| SardineQL[12] | Read-only SQL access to user, session and transaction data inside the Sardine platform, released as a preview in early 2026. | Beta |
How much does Sardine cost?
How it is charged: Sales-led enterprise contracts; Sardine describes usage-based pricing for its custom agents.
Sardine does not publish a price list.
Pricing is not published; sardine.ai has no pricing page, and its Custom Risk Agents page says only that 'usage-based pricing keeps spend aligned to actual platform usage', with no plans or figures.
Which banks use Sardine?
None of the 100 largest US banks covered on this site is publicly named as a Sardine customer as of Sep 24, 2026. Customers the company names are listed in the key points above.
Among the 100 largest US banks on this site, from sources that name the bank: the bank, Sardine or the press. Status is the furthest stage a source confirms.
What is Sardine agentic risk platform?
A single platform combining device and behavior intelligence, fraud scoring, KYC/KYB onboarding, AML transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, case management and credit underwriting, with a library of AI agents (sanctions screening, transaction monitoring, SAR generation, OSINT search and others) run from an 'Agent Hub'.[1][23][7]
What has Sardine done, and when?
- Sep 10, 2026
Publishes payments foundation-model results[18]
Sardine reported that adding embeddings from a transformer model trained on card transactions to its production issuing-fraud model caught 24% to 35% more fraud at the same flag rate, in its own experiment.
- Sep 1, 2026
Named a Leader in Forrester Wave[17]
Sardine announced it was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Financial Crime Management Solutions, Q3 2026, and said more than 450 global enterprises use it.
- Jul 2, 2026
Two-way integration with Infinite[16]
Sardine and stablecoin compliance platform Infinite linked Sardine's risk signals to Infinite's compliance workflows and Infinite's accounts to Sardine's payments infrastructure.
- Jun 24, 2026
Modern Treasury partnership[15]
Modern Treasury added Sardine's real-time transaction monitoring and fraud detection across stablecoin, wire, ACH, RTP, FedNow and push-to-card payments.
- May 20, 2026
National Bank of Canada deal and $25 million extension[13]
National Bank of Canada signed a multi-year partnership to deploy Sardine across retail, commercial and wealth after a live evaluation, and led a $25 million Series C extension taking total funding to $170 million.
- Mar 6, 2026
Linker Finance partnership for community banks[11]
Linker Finance integrated Sardine's device, behavioral and transaction risk signals into its community-bank platform for account opening, ACH, wire and AML monitoring.
- Dec 17, 2025
Partners with Helix by Q2 for sponsor banks[10]
Sardine agreed to supply real-time transaction monitoring, fraud interdiction and BSA/AML tools to sponsor banks and fintechs on Q2's Helix embedded-finance core; First Federal Bank of Kansas City was quoted supporting the integration.
- Feb 11, 2025
- Feb 6, 2024
SardineX renamed Sonar[6]
The consortium began operating as Sonar with 20 members and 30 more entities in due diligence, sharing first-party fraud and SAR-flag data under GLBA and FinCEN 314(b).
- Jun 27, 2023
Launches SardineX fraud consortium[5]
Sardine formed SardineX, a data-sharing consortium whose founding members included Chesapeake Bank, Visa, Airbase, Blockchain.com, Alloy Labs Alliance, iLex and Novo.
- Sep 20, 2022
$51.5 million Series B led by a16z[4]
Andreessen Horowitz's growth fund led a $51.5 million Series B with participants including Activant Capital, Visa, Google Ventures, NAventures and ING Ventures; Sardine reported over 135 customers.
- Feb 8, 2022
$19.5 million Series A[3]
Sardine raised $19.5 million from Andreessen Horowitz, NYCA and Experian Ventures, saying it served over 50 customers including Brex, Chipper Cash, FTX, Luno, Bakkt and MoonPay.
- Jan 1, 2020
Sardine founded[8]
Soups Ranjan and colleagues from the risk and compliance teams of Coinbase, Revolut, Uber and PayPal founded Sardine in 2020.
What do banks use Sardine for?
| Use | What it does | Status | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account-opening, account-takeover and payment fraud scoring[20][13] | Device, behavioral and transaction signals score onboarding, logins and payments in real time; National Bank of Canada is deploying device intelligence and real-time risk scoring across retail, commercial and wealth. | In production | Fraud detection |
| AML transaction monitoring and sanctions screening[21][22][11][10] | Pre-built AML rules, graph analysis and sanctions/PEP/adverse-media screening, offered to community banks through Linker Finance and to sponsor banks through Helix by Q2. | In production | AML / KYC |
| AI agents for alert triage and SAR drafting[23][8] | Agents that clear low-risk sanctions and monitoring alerts, research entities and draft SAR narratives, with human analysts accepting or rejecting proposed decisions. | In production | Generative & agentic AI |
| Sponsor-bank oversight of fintech programs[24][10] | A sponsor-bank dashboard to mandate AML controls and monitor onboarding, alerts and SAR trends across fintech partners. | In production | Third-party & vendor AI |
| Consortium data sharing (Sonar)[6][2] | Shares first-party fraud and counterparty risk signals across members under GLBA and FinCEN 314(b) information-sharing rules. | In production | Data & privacy |
| Consumer and business credit decisioning[25] | Credit workflows combining bureau, cash-flow, identity and behavioral data, with backtests and shadow mode; no US bank use named in the sources reviewed. | Announced | Credit scoring & underwriting |
What has Sardine disclosed in numbers?
| Metric | Value | As of |
|---|---|---|
| Total funding raised | $170 million, after a $25 million Series C extension led by National Bank of Canada[13] | May 20, 2026 |
| Valuation (company-stated, reported by Bloomberg) | $660 million at the $70 million Series C[9] | Feb 11, 2025 |
| Enterprise customers (vendor-reported) | More than 450 global enterprises (more than 300 in February 2025)[17][7] | Sep 1, 2026 |
| Consortium reach (vendor-reported) | More than 6 billion profiled devices, 800 million consumers and 3 million businesses[14] | May 20, 2026 |
| ARR growth in 2024 (vendor-reported) | 130% year over year, with the customer base nearly doubling[7] | Dec 31, 2024 |
| Foundation-model experiment (vendor-reported) | 24% to 35% more card-issuing fraud caught at the same flag rate; 28% at the riskiest-1% threshold[18] | Sep 10, 2026 |
“Sardine was built for banks that need to stop fraud without slowing down their loyal customers.”[13]
Soups Ranjan · CEO and Co-Founder, Sardine · May 20, 2026
“After closely following Sardine's growth and hearing strong feedback from existing customers, we decided to conduct an extensive evaluation of their platform.”[13]
Joshuah Lebacq · Partner, NAventures (National Bank of Canada) · May 20, 2026
“Modern money movement happens in real time and risk decisions have to keep pace.”[10]
Ravi Loganathan · Head of Banking & Policy, Sardine · Dec 17, 2025
Who runs Sardine?
Which rules apply to a bank using Sardine?
| Authority | Why it matters here | Documents |
|---|---|---|
| Federal Reserve | Sardine's fraud-scoring and transaction-monitoring models are vendor models a bank must inventory, validate and monitor under the April 2026 interagency model risk guidance (SR 26-2); its generative AI agents fall outside that guidance and under the bank's broader risk management. | SR 26-2 |
| OCC | A bank, or a sponsor bank overseeing fintechs through Sardine, takes on a third-party relationship that OCC Bulletin 2023-17 expects it to manage from due diligence to exit, and OCC Bulletin 2026-13 sets model-risk expectations for the vendor models it runs. | OCC Bulletin 2023-17 OCC Bulletin 2026-13 |
| FinCEN | Sardine sells deepfake and synthetic-identity detection against the red flags in FinCEN's 2024 deepfake alert, and its AML agents draft SAR narratives and clear alerts, work that stays the bank's BSA responsibility; FinCEN's April 2026 proposal would weigh effective use of AI in assessing AML programs. | FIN-2024-Alert004 (Deepfake Media) 2026 AML/CFT Program Proposed Rule |
| CFPB | Where a bank uses Sardine's credit underwriting or a fraud score to decline a credit application, ECOA and Regulation B adverse-action notice duties apply to that decision. | ECOA / Regulation B adverse action (15 U.S.C. 1691(d); 12 CFR 1002.9) |
Linked authorities have a page in the AI Regulation Tracker; the others are named for completeness.
What should a bank note before buying Sardine?
Analysis by BankingNewsAI from the sources cited on this page. Observations, not advice or a recommendation.
01
Pricing is not published
Sardine lists no plans or prices; its only public pricing statement is that custom agents are sold on usage-based pricing.
02
No named customer among our 100 US banks
Sardine's releases and case studies reviewed name National Bank of Canada, bunq and fintechs, and anonymise a 'tier-1 bank'; none names a bank on our list.
03
Bank reach runs partly through platforms
Much of Sardine's 2025-2026 bank distribution comes via Q2's Helix core for sponsor banks and Linker Finance for community banks, rather than direct contracts.
04
Results are vendor-reported
The 130% ARR growth, customer counts, consortium reach and the 24-35% foundation-model uplift are Sardine's own figures; the model result is from an internal experiment on its issuing-fraud model.
05
Origins in crypto and fintech
Sardine's 2022 releases named crypto exchanges including FTX among customers; its bank-focused products (sponsor-bank oversight, community-bank partnerships, a Canadian bank deal) date mainly from 2025-2026.
What are the alternatives to Sardine?
Feedzai
RiskOps platform for bank fraud, scam and AML prevention: transaction scoring, behavioral biometrics and network intelligence.
Featurespace
Real-time behavioral fraud and AML scoring for banks and processors (The Featurespace Platform, formerly ARIC Risk Hub); a Visa unit.
BioCatch
Behavioral-biometric and device intelligence that scores digital banking sessions for account takeover, scams, mules and application fraud.
Socure
Identity verification, fraud scoring and watchlist screening for account opening and login, run on its RiskOS decisioning platform.
Alloy
Identity and fraud prevention platform: onboarding KYC/KYB, fraud and login risk scoring, AML monitoring and data orchestration.
Pindrop
Phone-channel fraud scoring, passive caller authentication and voice deepfake detection for bank contact centers.
How much does Sardine cost?
Sardine does not publish pricing. Its website has no pricing page, and the only public statement is on its Custom Risk Agents page, which says usage-based pricing keeps spend aligned to actual platform usage, with dedicated forward-deployed engineering support. Banks and fintechs buy through sales-led contracts, so any figure has to come from a quote.
Which banks use Sardine?
None of the 100 largest US banks we track is named as a Sardine customer in the sources reviewed. Sardine's named bank customers include National Bank of Canada (multi-year deal, May 2026), the neobank bunq, and it reaches smaller US banks through Linker Finance (community banks) and Q2's Helix core (sponsor banks, with First Federal Bank of Kansas City quoted).
Who owns Sardine?
Sardine is privately held. Its investors include Andreessen Horowitz, Activant Capital (which led the $70 million Series C in February 2025), Nyca Partners, GV, Visa, Experian Ventures, Moody's and National Bank of Canada's NAventures, which led a $25 million extension in May 2026. Total funding is $170 million; Bloomberg reported a company-stated $660 million valuation at the Series C.
Is Sardine a bank or a regulated financial institution?
No. Sardine is a software vendor selling fraud, AML and risk tools to banks, fintechs and merchants. A bank that uses it remains responsible for its own BSA/AML program, suspicious activity reports and fraud controls, and must manage Sardine as a third-party vendor under the interagency third-party risk guidance.
What do Sardine's AI agents do?
Sardine offers agents for sanctions and PEP screening, transaction-monitoring alert triage, KYC onboarding, business due diligence, OSINT research and SAR narrative drafting. It says agent decisions are explainable with audit trails, and that its sanctions agent proposes a decision a human analyst accepts or rejects rather than deciding alone. Efficiency figures it cites are its own.
What is Sonar?
Sonar is Sardine's cross-industry fraud data consortium, launched as SardineX in June 2023 and renamed Sonar in February 2024. Members share first-party fraud, counterparty and SAR-flag signals under GLBA and FinCEN 314(b) rules; the February 2024 release reported 20 members, with 30 more entities in due diligence.
How does Sardine compare to Feedzai?
Both sell combined fraud and AML platforms. Feedzai is older (2011), larger by valuation (more than $2 billion in October 2025) and names Citigroup and SoFi among our tracked banks; Sardine (2020) was valued at $660 million in 2025, grew from crypto and fintech customers and names no tracked US bank. Neither publishes pricing.
- Agentic Financial Crime Platform for Fraud Prevention & AML
- About Us, The Agentic Risk Platform for Financial Crime
- Sardine Closes $19.5 Million in Series A Funding from Andreessen Horowitz and NYCA as It Sets a New Standard in Fraud Prevention
- Sardine Raises $51.5M Series B Led by Andreessen Horowitz
- Sardine Launches Industry-Wide Consortium to Curb The Rapid Rise of Payment Fraud
- Real-time Fraud Data Sharing Consortium SardineX Rebrands to Sonar, and Expands to 20 Members
- Sardine AI raises $70M to make fraud and compliance teams more productive
- Announcing Sardine's $70M Series C - Building trust in the age of AI
- Sardine Raises $70 Million to Build Fraud-Fighting AI Agents
- Sardine and Helix partner to deliver real-time fraud monitoring and compliance capabilities to sponsor banks
- Linker Finance and Sardine partner to deliver real-time fraud prevention for community banks
- Sardine Product Updates: February 2026
- National Bank of Canada partners with Sardine to strengthen digital banking security and fraud operations efficiency
- National Bank of Canada Partners with Sardine to Strengthen Digital Banking Security and Fraud Operations Efficiency
- Modern Treasury partners with Sardine to help businesses detect fraud earlier and reduce risk at scale
- Infinite and Sardine launch two-way integration linking compliance, risk, and payments
- Sardine Named a Leader in Financial Crime Management
- We trained a foundation model on spending and it caught 35% more fraud
- Custom Risk Agents
- Device and Behavior Intelligence (undated page, retrieved 2026-09-24)
- AML Transaction Monitoring (undated page, retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Sanctions Screening (undated page, retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Agentic AI for AML That Clears Queues and False Positives (undated page, retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Risk Management for Sponsor Banks (undated page, retrieved 2026-09-24)
- Credit Underwriting (undated page, retrieved 2026-09-24)
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