Sardine announced a multi-year partnership with the National Bank of Canada to strengthen digital banking security and improve fraud operations efficiency across the bank’s platforms.
The partnership will see Canada’s sixth-largest bank deploy Sardine’s device intelligence and real-time risk scoring technology across its retail, commercial, and wealth management solutions. According to the companies, the agreement followed an extensive live evaluation process in which Sardine improved fraud detection performance while reducing false positives, helping minimize friction for customers.
National Bank of Canada, which serves approximately 2.7 million clients globally, selected Sardine’s agentic risk platform as part of its efforts to modernize financial crime prevention operations and enhance digital banking security.
Joshuah Lebacq, Partner at NAventures, the corporate venture capital arm of National Bank of Canada, said the bank had closely monitored Sardine’s growth before conducting a comprehensive evaluation of the platform.
The partnership also deepens the bank’s financial commitment to Sardine. National Bank of Canada is leading a $25 million Series C extension round for the company, bringing Sardine’s total funding to $170 million.
Lebacq emphasized the growing importance of agentic AI in risk and compliance operations and said Sardine’s financial crime agents are helping define the category for modern fraud prevention technologies.
Sardine said the agreement reflects continued momentum within the financial services industry, where banks and wealth management firms are increasingly adopting scalable and AI-driven tools to combat fraud, anti-money laundering threats, and other forms of financial crime.
The company’s platform combines fraud prevention, AML operations, and real-time risk intelligence into a unified system designed to help organizations identify and stop fraudulent activity while improving operational efficiency. Sardine said its fraud consortium now spans more than 6 billion profiled devices, 800 million consumers, and 3 million businesses worldwide.
Soups Ranjan, CEO and co-founder of Sardine, said the company built its platform specifically for financial institutions seeking to stop fraud without disrupting legitimate customer activity. He added that National Bank of Canada is among the most respected financial institutions in North America and that Sardine is proud to support the bank’s financial crime operations.
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“After closely following Sardine’s growth and hearing strong feedback from existing customers, we decided to conduct an extensive evaluation of their platform. The results gave us confidence to make Sardine a strong addition to our financial crime prevention operations and expand our commercial relationship.
We’re excited about the potential of agentic AI, especially in the risk and compliance sphere, and Sardine’s financial crime agents are setting the standard for the category.”
Joshuah Lebacq, Partner, NAventures
“Sardine was built for banks that need to stop fraud without slowing down their loyal customers. National Bank of Canada is one of the most respected financial institutions in North America, and we’re proud to support their financial crime operations as they continue to set the standard for digital banking in Canada.”
Soups Ranjan, CEO And Co-Founder, Sardine
