OFAC Payment FAQs
Answers to common questions about OFAC sanctions and agent payments, covering x402, screening, and the 4-Gate protocol.
TL;DR
TL;DR: Agent payments are funds transfers subject to OFAC, and the rails that move money do not screen. Add a pre-payment check and stop on any BLOCK result.
Why payments need a gate
Payment rails including x402, AP2, ACP, and Coinbase AgentKit move money but do not screen counterparties. That gap is where an agent creates an OFAC violation for its operator. SanctionsAI closes it with a check before each payment: a clean result returns ALLOW and a flagged result returns BLOCK, in a single HTTP call under 100 ms.
Common questions
- What does the 4-Gate protocol do? SCREEN, then SCORE, then STOP, then STAMP, applied to every payment.
- What does per-check pricing look like? $0.05 per check via x402, with a free tier of 5 checks per day and monthly plans from $19.
- What data is checked? 947 OFAC-listed crypto wallets and 19,218 SDN names, synced hourly.