A16z, NYCA, and Experian got together in the capital raise for the San Francisco startup, Sardine Funding.

Sardine, fraud and compliance platform for fintech, raised $19.5 million in a Series A round that included Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), NYCA, and Experian Ventures, announced on 10 Feb 2022. The company is working hard on product development, investing in hiring aggressively, and raising $19.5 million in the current round of funding, with investors like Andreessen Horowitz, NYCA, and Experian.

We plan to use the invested capital for developing our products and hiring aggressively in the coming months. Angela Strange, an a16z general partner, will join the Sardine board of directors as part of this investment.

Sardine’s Account Intelligence Platform uses artificial intelligence to provide real-time fraud scores. It checks during each log-in for fraud with user identity, device, and behavior.

Thanks to new features from Sardine, customers using cryptocurrency can now withdraw their funds from the platform more quickly via ACH transfers which will take only a few days. Sardine assumes the fraud, regulatory compliance, and legal risks of the ACH transactions.

Sardine was launched last year and has grown to over 50 customers, including neobank Brex, crypto exchanges FTX and Bakkt, and MoonPay and Candy Digital. Soups Ranjan used to be CEO of Sardine. He also ran data science and risk at Coinbase. The company’s teams are composed of former Googlers, Revolut employees, Bolts builders, and PayPal alumni.”

“Every company with a payments component faces the same problem: the momentum-killing wait time between when the customer transfers money to your platform and when they can use that money on your service to transact,” said a16z’s Strange in the press release. “Sardine solves this issue to keep financial transactions moving for the good of all. Its value proposition becomes even clearer when you consider that every company is rapidly becoming a fintech company.”

The technology is now used by more than 50 firms, including neobanks such as Brex and crypto exchanges Bakkt and FTX, which integrate Sardine’s SDK into their web & mobile apps. Instantly deposit crypto to start using it on your favorite exchanges! Join forces with Binance and sign up for an account.

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.”

You can’t be sure if someone is loading money from their bank account or a stolen one. If you need to make a transaction, secure your device and verify the account or withdrawing funds. Sardine built a system that uses user behavior to understand how they act. It collects data about both the phone and email and the social media and blockchain analytics of these users to provide an accurate understanding of their behaviors.