London’s PPRO invests and partners up with Amsterdam-based Sentinels to combat financial crimes

London-based PPRO, a fintech company that offers local payments infrastructure to financial institutions, has announced a partnership with Amsterdam-based Sentinels, an AI-powered transaction monitoring startup. PPRO has also invested an undisclosed amount in the Dutch company.

The companies claim the partnership will enhance anti-money laundering controls for PPRO and its customers by enabling a faster response time to suspicious transactions.

The Sentinels platform will also be offered as a value-added service to PPRO’s customers such as global payment service providers, banks, and enterprises with payment platforms.

As digital transactions increased after the Covid-19 pandemic, fintechs and other financial institutions increasingly continue to focus on cracking down on money laundering and other illegal activity attempts on their platforms. The current deal helps PPRO beef up its efforts.

Speaking on the development, PPRO CEO Simon Black says, “The Sentinels’ platform and machine learning-generated insights will give our risk and compliance teams a streamlined workflow. 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.”

A data-driven transaction monitoring platform

Founded in 2019 by Joost van Houten, Sentinels spun off from Slimmer AI, a Groningen-based B2B AI venture studio.

Using AI and machine learning, Sentinels helps fast-growing fintechs, payment service providers, remittance companies, and (challenger) banks manage risk and fulfil their compliance obligations. 

The platform monitors transactions, builds rich behavioural profiles, detects a wide range of suspicious activity, and automatically generates recommended next steps – saving time and effort for compliance teams.

Joost van Houten says, “Never has there been a more critical time for businesses to bolster their transaction monitoring systems. We predict an increased demand for AI-driven risk management services as digital payments rapidly increase and regulators intensify their focus on preventing financial crime.”

Sentinels is ISO 27001 certified and was designed and developed to meet the strictest regulatory requirements in Europe. The company serves a range of clients including Mollie, Terrapay, Online Payment Platform, Ginger Payments, and ManoBank among its roster of clients.

Joost van Houten adds, “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.”

About PPRO

PPRO is a fintech company that globalises payment platforms for businesses, allowing them to offer more choice at checkout and boost cross-border sales. The company claims that payment service providers, enterprises, and banks that run on its infrastructure are able to launch payment methods faster, optimise checkout conversions, and reduce the complexities of managing multiple fund flows.

Some of its customers include giants such as Citi, PayPal, and Stripe. PPRO is regulated in the UK by the FCA and in Luxembourg by the CSSF.

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