The round was joined by a host of big names, including XYZ, Nyca Partners, Sound Ventures, Activant Capital, Visa, Google Ventures, Eric Schmidt, Vikram Pandit, The General Partnership, NAventures, ING Ventures, ConsenSys, Cross River Digital Ventures, Alloy Labs, and Uniswap Labs Ventures.

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 startup offers an instant ACH and card on-ramp to crypto, enabling its fintech and crypto customers to instantly purchase over 30 different crypto assets or NFTs. Sardine recently launched a direct fiat to NFT checkout product.

Soups Ranjan, CEO, Sardine, says: “Faster payments means faster fraud. As Zelle, RTP and FedNow become increasingly popular, consumers are increasingly vulnerable to social engineering attacks where they are convinced to buy something that never arrives or invest in a scam.

“Secondly, Financial Institutions only know that their customers bought ETH or USDC, not what they do with it afterwards. What is needed is a new way of looking at fraud prevention, one which deeply inspects user behaviour at the time of purchase, and combines it with what happens to the funds downstream. That’s exactly what we built at Sardine.”