Linker Finance has formed a strategic partnership with Sardine in a move designed to strengthen fraud prevention capabilities across community banking services.
The collaboration aims to introduce advanced real-time fraud detection across Linker Finance’s retail and business banking products. By integrating Sardine’s risk intelligence capabilities, the platform will deliver enhanced protection during critical financial workflows such as account opening, funding and payment processing. The partnership seeks to help smaller banks access enterprise-level fraud defence tools while reducing operational burden and strengthening depositor security.
Linker Finance provides technology infrastructure designed to help community banks modernise digital banking services. Its platform orchestrates retail and commercial banking processes, enabling institutions to manage customer onboarding, account operations and payments through a modular system tailored to the needs of smaller financial institutions.
Sardine, meanwhile, specialises in financial crime prevention through advanced risk monitoring and automated decisioning tools. The platform analyses device signals, behavioural patterns and transaction activity to detect suspicious behaviour in real time, helping financial institutions identify fraud attempts, account takeovers and other illicit activity earlier in the process.
Through the integration, Sardine’s device, behavioural and transaction risk signals will be embedded across Linker Finance’s workflows. This includes deposit account opening and funding processes, as well as authentication and payment transactions. The integration also focuses on higher-risk banking activities such as KYC and KYB verification, AML monitoring and ACH and wire transfers.
The partnership enables banks to combine Sardine’s technology infrastructure signals with Linker’s orchestration and customer intelligence capabilities. This approach provides institutions with richer insight into potential risks while helping automate decision-making and reduce manual review workloads for operational teams.
Additional capabilities introduced through the collaboration include real-time risk scoring during account opening and funding, enhanced authentication using device and behavioural signals, integrated AML monitoring and sanctions screening, and automated case escalation for suspicious activity. The system also supports centralised risk orchestration that works alongside existing consortium and rules-based fraud detection tools used by banks.
Sardine GM of banking Ravi Loganathan said, “Community banks remain the backbone of local economies, but are often lacking the sophisticated anti-fraud and risk management technologies of major national banks. By integrating Sardine with Linker’s retail and business banking workflows, we’re giving community institutions enterprise grade protection that will protect their customers and communities with confidence.”
Linker Finance CEO and co-founder Jorge Garcia said, “Combining Linker’s retail and business banking capabilities with Sardine’s advanced risk signals transforms how community banks combat payment and account fraud. By applying Sardine’s real-time scoring to check processing, ACH and wire transactions alongside AML monitoring, banks gain faster threat detection and automated response options, which reduces manual review workload for bankers, lets teams prioritize customer relationships and strengthens protection for depositors.”
Linker Finance EVP and CIO Pete Torres said, “As a technology organization, we focus on integrations that are fast, reliable and measurable. Sardine’s low-latency APIs and robust device and behavioral signals let us automate risk decisions in real time across retail and commercial flows, improve customer conversion during funding, and significantly reduce manual workload for operations.”
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