ALPHARETTA, Ga.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ingo Payments, a trusted leader in account funding and disbursement solutions defined as money mobility, and Sardine, the leader in real-time fraud prevention, today announced a new partnership to offer instant, risk-managed account funding via card and ACH, backed by an optional zero-liability fraud guarantee. This, combined with Ingo’s industry-leading inbound check funding solution, provides issuers with a complete solution for fast, secure account funding across all three critical form factors: check, card, and ACH.

In today’s financial landscape, issuers face the dual challenge of preventing fraud while ensuring that new accounts are funded and valuable from the start. Despite streamlined onboarding, traditional funding methods such as ACH are slow and prone to risk, often resulting in unfunded accounts and higher acquisition costs. Card funding, while faster, has been found to be highly vulnerable to fraud, causing many issuers to scale back or discontinue these options.

The Ingo Payments and Sardine partnership addresses these issues by offering instant card and ACH funding, supported by real-time risk management that detects and prevents fraud before it impacts issuers. By combining Ingo’s and Sardine’s extensive network-wide fraud data and AI-driven analysis, the solution generates real-time risk scores, empowering issuers to make fast, informed decisions on funding eligibility while minimizing exposure to fraudulent transactions. The optional zero-liability fraud guarantee ensures issuers are fully protected from any fraud-related losses.

"With this partnership, we’re offering issuers more than just fast funding," said Drew Edwards, CEO of Ingo Payments. "By combining our collective expertise, fraud data, and technology, we’re integrating real-time risk management with a zero-liability fraud guarantee, delivering a secure solution that enables issuers to engage customers instantly, mitigating concerns over fraud-related losses."

"At Sardine, we make sure fraud prevention happens before a transaction is even completed, using real-time data and machine learning to stay ahead of the game. This partnership gives issuers a solution that not only speeds up funding but adapts intelligently to new fraud tactics, so they can move fast without worrying about risk," said Soups Ranjan, CEO of Sardine.

Ingo Payments and Sardine help issuers overcome the challenge of unfunded accounts, reduce acquisition costs, and drive greater customer engagement by offering instant, secure, and risk-managed funding options from day one. The solution is now commercially available.

About Ingo Payments

Ingo Payments enables banks, fintechs, and enterprise brands to deliver innovative financial experiences through its bank-grade, compliance-first embedded finance platform. Complete with money mobility capabilities, built on top of a modern money stack, the platform provides the foundation for account funding, transfers, mobile deposits, payouts, digital wallets, bank account creation, card issuing, PFM, and rewards solutions across a wide range of industries and use cases. By vertically integrating issuing, payment processing, and risk underwriting services, we help clients reduce third-party risk, operational complexity, and costs, while accelerating time to market. Learn more at ingopayments.com.

About Sardine

Sardine’s real-time fraud prevention and compliance platform is trusted by leading companies in financial services and ecommerce. We apply device intelligence, behavior biometrics, and machine learning to protect every step of the customer journey – from onboarding to payments and logins. Sardine enables hundreds of organizations worldwide to rapidly detect and stop identity fraud, payment fraud, account takeovers, social engineering scams, fraud rings, money laundering and advanced bot attacks. Backed by Andreessen Horowitz, Visa, Experian, FIS, and Google Ventures, Sardine is a proven leader in the fight against financial crime. Learn more at sardine.ai.