Linker Finance taps Sardine for community bank fraud protection

Linker Finance has partnered with Sardine to integrate real-time fraud detection capabilities into its modular banking platform, targeting improved risk management for community banks handling retail and commercial transactions.

The partnership will bring Sardine’s device, behavioural and transaction-level risk signals into Linker Finance’s platform, enabling banks to detect and respond to potentially fraudulent activity across critical workflows such as deposit account opening, funding, authentication, and payments. The integration aims to strengthen depositor protection while reducing the operational burden associated with manual fraud review processes.

The combined solution focuses on high-risk areas including know-your-customer (KYC) and know-your-business (KYB) verification, anti-money laundering (AML) monitoring, and payment flows such as ACH and wire transfers. By integrating Sardine’s technology infrastructure signals with Linker’s orchestration layer and customer intelligence tools, banks are expected to gain faster visibility into suspicious behaviour across both retail and business banking channels.

“Community banks remain the backbone of local economies, but are often lacking the sophisticated anti-fraud and risk management technologies of major national banks,” said Ravi Loganathan, GM of Banking at Sardine. “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.”

“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 prioritise customer relationships and strengthens protection for depositors,” said Jorge Garcia, CEO and Co-Founder of Linker Finance.

The integrated platform will apply automated risk scoring to activities such as cheque processing, ACH payments and wire transfers alongside AML monitoring and sanctions screening. The system also enables case escalation and automated decisioning to prioritise high-risk cases while allowing operations teams to focus on customer engagement.

The partnership reflects a broader shift in the banking sector toward embedded fraud prevention capabilities that operate in real time across the customer lifecycle. As financial crime becomes more sophisticated and digital account onboarding accelerates, community banks are increasingly seeking integrated technology platforms that can deliver enterprise-grade fraud controls without requiring large internal compliance teams.