OFAC Payment Screening

Screening the recipient of every payment by wallet, name, and jurisdiction before funds are transferred.

TL;DR

TL;DR: Payment screening checks each payee by wallet, name, and jurisdiction before money moves, so a sanctioned party never receives funds in the first place.

Three dimensions to check

A complete payment screen covers three attributes. The wallet: OFAC lists crypto wallet addresses tied to sanctioned actors, and 947 are tracked. The name: the counterparty is matched against 19,218 SDN names. The jurisdiction: the transaction's location is checked against 16 sanctioned jurisdictions. Checking all three closes the gaps that any single dimension leaves open. Screening all three at once is what makes a payment screen complete rather than a name check with gaps.

Why before funds move

Screening must happen before transfer because once funds settle, the violation has occurred. Under strict liability, intent is not required, and recovering money from a blocked party is not a defense. The only reliable control is to gate the payment on a clean screen. For crypto payments, the wallet check is the most direct, since the address itself is what is designated.

Payment screening for agents

sanctionsai.dev performs this check in one HTTP call in under 100 ms. An agent sends the counterparty, receives ALLOW or BLOCK, and pays only on a clean result. The 4-Gate Agent Payment Protocol makes this explicit: SCREEN, SCORE, STOP, and STAMP, where SCREEN runs before any value moves and STOP halts flagged payments. Payment rails such as x402, AP2, ACP, and Coinbase AgentKit move money but do not run these checks, so the screening step must be added explicitly.