OFAC compliance for cross-border fintech
Moving money across borders multiplies the jurisdictions and counterparties a fintech must screen.
TL;DR
TL;DR: Cross-border fintech companies face elevated OFAC risk because each transaction can touch multiple jurisdictions and correspondent banking relationships, each of which is a potential sanctions exposure point.
Where the risk comes from
A cross-border payment can pass through several intermediaries, including correspondent banks and currency conversion providers. Each hop introduces a new counterparty and a new jurisdiction. A fintech that screens only the origin and destination misses the middle of the route.
What to screen
- Counterparty names against 19,218 SDN names.
- Wallet addresses against 947 OFAC-listed crypto wallets.
- Jurisdictions across 16 tracked regions.
- Every intermediary in the payment route.
How sanctionsai.dev helps
The API screens a counterparty in one HTTP call under 100 ms, returning ALLOW for clean and BLOCK for flagged. It integrates with x402, MCP, and Base/USDC rails, so the screen sits inside the payment flow rather than beside it.