Sardine: AI Fraud Prevention That Scores Before the Click | Review

Sardine uses behavioral biometrics and device intelligence to stop fraud at the moment of risk, before transactions complete. For fintech teams drowning in false positives and struggling with synthetic identities, this is a platform that catches account takeovers and payment fraud by reading how users behave, not just what data they provide.

Founded 2020 | HQ: San Francisco | Funding: $145 million

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Overview

Sardine was founded in 2020 by Soups Ranjan (CEO), Aditya Goel, and Zahid Shaikh, three former financial crime leaders from Revolut who built that company's fraud and compliance stack from scratch. The platform solves a fundamental problem in modern fraud prevention: traditional rule-based systems miss sophisticated attacks like synthetic identity creation and account takeovers because they only look at static data. Sardine layers behavioral biometrics, device intelligence, and machine learning to catch irregularities in how users interact with your application. Hundreds of enterprises across 70 countries now use Sardine to prevent new account fraud, payment fraud, account takeovers, and money laundering. In 2025, the company raised $70 million in Series C funding led by Activant Capital, achieving 130 percent year-over-year ARR growth and nearly doubling its customer base.

What We Like

Behavioral biometrics catch what rules miss. Sardine's core insight is that fraudsters behave differently from legitimate users. The platform measures keystroke dynamics, mouse movement patterns, copy-paste behavior, window switching, and hesitation events. When someone types from long-term memory like their name, behavior is fluid and natural. When they copy-paste stolen credentials, patterns become erratic. This approach reduced account takeover attempts by 34.8 percent at customer deployments while cutting false positives, a rare combination that most fraud teams struggle to achieve.

Device intelligence combines multiple signals into one score. Sardine correlates device fingerprints, network signals, behavioral data, and enriched data from 40+ external providers to build a unified risk assessment at the session level. This matters because it catches modern attacks: synthetic identities, mobile emulators, virtual machines, deepfakes, and location spoofing all leave detectable traces when data is correlated correctly. A single SDK integration yields fraud signals for onboarding, transactions, and ongoing account monitoring.

Compliance and support infrastructure matches enterprise requirements. Sardine holds SOC 2 Type II certification, is a Nacha Preferred Partner for fraud and compliance, and maintains PCI and NIST CSF alignment across its information security program. The compliance team is dedicated to helping enterprise customers pass their own audits. Support ratings of 4/5 reflect responsiveness during critical fraud incidents, when minutes matter.

Recent partnerships expand reach into underserved segments. In December 2025, Sardine partnered with Helix to deliver real-time fraud monitoring and BSA/AML compliance to sponsor banks and fintechs. The company also launched SardineX, an industry consortium with Visa, Blockchain.com, Alloy, and others, to coordinate fraud prevention across institutions. These moves signal that Sardine is positioning itself as critical infrastructure, not just a vendor.

What to Watch

Pricing transparency is weak and entry costs are high. Sardine operates a sales-led pricing model with minimum monthly commits drawn down against usage. Market estimates place typical annual contract value in the mid-six figures for platform and usage combined, making Sardine accessible mainly to scale-stage fintech companies and large enterprises. Smaller teams should expect sales conversations rather than self-serve pricing, and budget accordingly.

Integration ease depends on your architecture. While Sardine claims one-day SDK integration for web and mobile, this assumes your system is already prepared for real-time risk scoring. Companies with legacy monolithic stacks or custom authentication flows may face longer implementation timelines. The documentation is comprehensive but requires developer familiarity with risk scoring concepts and API design patterns.

Behavioral biometrics raise privacy and consent questions. Collecting keystroke dynamics, mouse movements, and behavioral signals requires explicit user consent in most jurisdictions. Teams in GDPR, CCPA, or similar regulatory environments need to justify behavioral data collection in privacy policies and disclosures. Sardine provides technical controls, but compliance responsibility sits with the customer.

Pricing and Deployment

Sardine uses a consumption-based pricing model with a minimum monthly commit. Typical enterprise deployments run $100k to $200k annually, though exact pricing depends on transaction volume, number of risk events, and modules licensed. Deployment is cloud-only via API and SDK integration across web, iOS, and Android. Sales team engagement is required for contracts and implementation planning.

Compliance and Security

Sardine maintains SOC 2 Type II certification, verified through annual independent audits. The company is a Nacha Preferred Partner and follows NIST Cybersecurity Framework principles across information security and risk management. Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Penetration testing reports are available to customers. No PCI DSS Level 1 badge is advertised, but the company maintains PCI compliance for payment-related deployments.

Verdict

Sardine is the strongest fit for mid-market and enterprise fintech teams with fraud budgets and technical infrastructure to match. If your company processes hundreds of thousands of accounts per month and faces synthetic identity or account takeover fraud at scale, Sardine's behavioral biometrics and device intelligence will meaningfully reduce attack surface. The Nacha partnership and compliance infrastructure make it especially valuable for companies approaching institutional lending or regulated payment operations. Teams with smaller fraud volumes, tight budgets, or legacy systems should evaluate whether the entry cost and integration complexity justify the benefit. Start with a pilot on a single use case, like new account fraud, to validate ROI before committing to full platform deployment.

Try Sardine: sardine.ai

Editorial disclaimer: Reviews reflect the independent editorial assessment of Major Matters and are not sponsored or endorsed by the companies reviewed. We recommend conducting your own evaluation to determine whether any product is the right fit for your specific requirements.

Charlie Major is a Product Development Manager at Mastercard. The views and opinions expressed in Major Matters are his own and do not represent those of Mastercard.