The third quarter of 2026 was busy for fraud prevention, identity and financial crime compliance. Fourteen companies announced funding and six acquisitions changed the shape of the market, led by Visa’s $2.4B purchase of BioCatch. Three themes stand out: verifying and controlling AI agents, consolidation in identity verification, and growing investment in protecting consumers from scams and deepfakes.

Here is a summary of every deal.

Funding

Cinder

Cinder raised a $41M Series B led by Radical Ventures, with Accel, Y Combinator, M12, PSP Growth and Outpost Ventures participating. Founded in 2022 and headquartered in New York, Cinder runs AI agents for content moderation, case investigation, IP enforcement and user fraud detection, with human review built into each workflow. The company plans to double its headcount within 12 months.

Guardio

Israeli consumer security company Guardio raised $40M at a $1.1B valuation, bringing its total funding to $167M. Wiz cofounder Assaf Rappaport invested personally, alongside ION Crossover Partners, Union Tech Ventures and Vintage Investment Partners. Guardio says it now has more than one million paying customers and over $150M in annual recurring revenue, and it will use the money to expand its anti scam products.

Baselayer

Baselayer closed a $35M Series A led by M13, with Torch Capital, Picus and Afore Capital participating, bringing its total funding to about $40M. Alongside the round it launched its Agentic Identity Suite, a “Know Your Agent” system that checks who deployed an AI agent, who it represents and whether it is allowed to carry out a task. Its core Know Your Business product is already used by more than 2,000 US financial institutions.

Footprint

New York based Footprint raised a $25M Series B led by QED Investors, taking its total equity funding to about $45M. The company builds an AI platform for financial crime compliance covering KYC, AML and identity checks, with clients including Bilt, Nuvei and MoonPay. The funding will double its engineering and sales teams and open a San Francisco office.

IPID

Singapore based IPID raised a $16M Series A led by Foundation Capital, with Citi and HSBC joining as strategic investors. Founded in 2021 by former SWIFT employees, IPID verifies bank account details before a payment is sent, covering more than 50 countries. Both Citi and HSBC are also customers, and the company will use the round to expand in the US and Europe and add support for stablecoins and digital assets.

Apate.AI

Sydney founded Apate.AI closed an oversubscribed $8.15M seed round led by Lobby Capital. Its AI voice and text agents pose as scam victims, keeping fraudsters talking for up to two hours while collecting intelligence on their methods, phishing links and mule accounts. The company has reincorporated in the US and is opening a London office, with Commonwealth Bank of Australia among its clients.

Marble

Paris based Marble raised a €6.5M Series A led by Smartfin, bringing its total funding to €9M. Marble offers an open source fraud and AML platform with a no code rule builder, sanctions and PEP screening and case management, and it is used by more than 100 financial institutions in over 25 countries. The funding will add AI to compliance workflows such as rule generation, alert triage and investigations.

Beltic

San Francisco startup Beltic emerged from stealth with a $7.3M seed round led by Norwest. Beltic builds infrastructure to verify AI agents, checking their identity, their authority and whether their transactions are legitimate, so businesses can safely accept and deploy agent traffic. The round follows a $1.5M pre seed led by Collide Capital.

Instarc

Tallinn based regtech company Instarc raised €1.25M in a strategic investment led by HFO Investments. Instarc provides digital onboarding, identity verification and regulatory reporting tools. The money will fund the rollout of its compliance platform in South Africa, where regulated firms must comply with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act.

FARx

UK company FARx, based in Malvern, raised a £625K seed round through the UK SEIS and EIS schemes to fund international expansion. FARx develops fused biometrics, combining speaker, speech and face recognition into a single identity check designed to stand up to AI generated fraud, and already works with more than 40 banks.

TRM Labs

Blockchain intelligence company TRM Labs extended its Series C at a reported $2B valuation, double the $1B valuation of its round earlier in 2026. The amount was not disclosed and was funded by existing investors. TRM says it is close to $100M in annual recurring revenue and plans to launch a new AI investigations platform.

Reality Defender

KPMG LLP took a minority stake in deepfake detection company Reality Defender and plans to build its technology into KPMG’s business services. The amount was not disclosed. Reality Defender was named a Market Shaper in Gartner’s Emerging Market Quadrant for Deepfake Detection earlier this year.

RiskScout

Austin based RiskScout closed a funding round led by LiveOak Ventures, with Castle Creek Launchpad, the Bankers Helping Bankers Fund, Alloy Labs, Brue2 and C3 Ventures participating. RiskScout offers an integrated BSA/AML and fraud prevention platform for banks and credit unions. The company says it more than tripled revenue over the past year and will use the funding to keep growing its team of compliance and fraud specialists.

Aurachain

Zurich headquartered Aurachain received a strategic growth investment of an undisclosed amount from Evolution Equity Partners. Aurachain describes itself as a system of action for compliance, risk and fraud operations, covering client lifecycle compliance, financial crime, fraud investigations and third party risk. The investment will fund US expansion, its partner network and Fraud.Watch, its fraud intelligence network for financial institutions.

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Acquisitions

Visa acquires BioCatch

Visa agreed to buy BioCatch for $2.4B in cash from funds advised by Permira and other shareholders, the largest deal of the quarter. Tel Aviv based BioCatch uses behavioral biometrics, such as typing patterns and touch gestures, to detect fraud during online banking sessions, and it serves more than 350 banks in 21 countries. BioCatch will join Visa’s value added services division with its leadership team in place, and the deal is expected to close by the end of Visa’s fiscal second quarter of 2027.

Prytek Group acquires Scanovate

Prytek Group acquired Israeli digital identity and compliance company Scanovate in a deal worth about $50M, which the companies expect to generate up to $100M in shareholder value. Scanovate’s B-Trust platform serves more than 250 customers, about 120 of them financial institutions. Scanovate will lead the client lifecycle management segment within Prytek.

Stakk Limited acquires ParaScript

ASX listed Stakk Limited completed its $63M acquisition of ParaScript, a Colorado based company specializing in AI document intelligence and fraud detection. The deal combines Stakk’s digital trust platform with ParaScript’s document processing to create a global platform focused on fighting fraud.

Incode acquires Identiq

Identity verification company Incode acquired Israeli startup Identiq as part of a $100M commitment to privacy first identity technology. Identiq’s cryptographic technology lets organizations compare fraud signals across a network without sharing the underlying customer data. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Unico acquires Valida

Brazilian digital identity company Unico agreed to acquire Argentina’s Valida, a facial biometrics identity verification provider with about half of Argentina’s banking sector as customers. Terms were not disclosed. Unico, valued at about $2.6B, plans to open a Buenos Aires office in January 2027.

Omada acquires EmpowerID

Danish identity governance company Omada acquired US based EmpowerID to add real time governance of AI agents, controlling what an agent is allowed to do while it is acting. EmpowerID’s technology will be built into Omada’s identity governance platform, and EmpowerID CEO Patrick Parker becomes Omada’s chief innovation officer. Financial terms were not disclosed.