San Francisco-based Sardine (website), a fraud prevention and compliance fintech company, has raised $51.5 million in a Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz‘s Growth Fund (a16z). Sardine’s real-time fraud prevention products help customers reduce fraud in fast money movements such as bank and card payments, digital wallet, and cryptocurrencies.
According to the San Francisco-based company, the platform results in fewer false positives, leading to faster user growth and higher approval rates.
Sardine combines traditional financial records – such as bank account history – with identity, behavioral and device intelligence to significantly improve customers’ risk tolerance. Sardine also provides KYC, AML, sanctions, and transaction monitoring to reduce fraud at various stages of a customer’s account lifecycle. Sardine has been named one of the fastest growing startups in the U.S. with over 135 different customers and is currently actively hiring for engineering, product development, sales, and operations roles.
Fraud is a pressing issue facing fintechs, with research suggesting that payments fraud will increase by up to 70% by 2021. In addition to a16z, Sardine’s latest funding round includes new and returning investors such as XYZ, Sound Ventures, Activant Capital, Google Ventures and ING Ventures. Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and former Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit have also invested in the company.