OFAC screening for B2B payments

How businesses should screen vendors and counterparties before sending B2B payments.

TL;DR

TL;DR: Business-to-business payments must be screened against the SDN List before funds are sent. The 50 Percent Rule means a vendor 50 percent or more owned by a blocked person is itself blocked, so ownership reach-through is essential.

Vendors are counterparties like any other

A B2B payment is a transfer of value, and OFAC (the Office of Foreign Assets Control) treats it the same as any other: sending funds to a blocked entity is a violation, and intent is not required. The SDN List, the Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List, is the reference for who cannot be paid.

The 50 Percent Rule is the hidden risk

The 50 Percent Rule extends a block to any entity 50 percent or more owned by a blocked person. For B2B payments this is the most common miss: a vendor whose legal name looks clean can still be blocked through its ownership. A proper check resolves the individuals behind the corporate entity, not just the company name.

Making the check part of AP

agentmail, the screening API at sanctionsai.dev, can run inside the accounts payable flow: one HTTP call under 100 ms returns clean (ALLOW) or flagged (BLOCK), checking 19,218 SDN names and 947 OFAC-listed crypto wallets across 16 jurisdictions, synced hourly. Screening at invoice approval, before the payment is released, keeps the check cheap and the exposure contained.