UK-based payment infrastructure firm PPRO has made a strategic investment in Netherlands-based transaction monitoring startup Sentinels.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
Sentinels leverages AI and machine learning capabilities to help payment service providers, remittance companies, and challenger banks manage their compliance obligations.
The company’s platform is designed to monitor transactions, develop behavioural profiles and identify any dubious activities and to offer recommended next steps in such scenarios.
As part of its investment in Sentinels, PPRO customers will be offered the full Sentinels platform as a value-added service.
The move would help PPRO to boost its anti-money laundering (AML) controls and keep financial crime risks, and suspicious transactions in check for its customers.
PPRO CEO Simon Black remarked that the Sentinels platform would offer a streamlined workflow for the company’s risk and compliance teams.
Black added: “Being able to detect money laundering and other financial crime risks in real time is incredibly valuable to our customers.
“That’s why we’re delighted to invest in and begin building a strategic relationship with Sentinels, who have proven to be an innovative firm with an extremely powerful product.”
Sentinels founder and CEO Joost Houten said: “We are excited to have PPRO’s support and enormously proud to be a valuable part of their unique local payment’s ecosystem – helping businesses quickly and safely increase their global footprint.
“Unique to our partnership with PPRO is that Sentinels will be able to monitor for suspicious activity across PPRO’s customers, enabling cross-institutional monitoring which is the next exciting frontier in compliance.”
Earlier this month, PPRO integrated two of the most popular payment methods in Indonesia, Jenius Pay and LinkAja, into its platform.
In January, the firm secured $180m in a financing round, taking its valuation to over $1bn.
