How to monitor OFAC screening in production

Production monitoring means tracking that every payment is screened, how often matches occur, and whether the check stays fast and reliable.

TL;DR

TL;DR: Track screening coverage, match rate, and response time, and alert immediately when checks fail or coverage drops below 100 percent.

Coverage metrics

The key metric is coverage: what share of payments ran through a screening call before settlement. That number should stay at 100 percent. Any payment that skips the screen is an exposure point, because OFAC enforces with strict liability and intent is not required.

Match rate and response time

Watch the match rate to understand how often your system encounters flagged counterparties, and watch response time to catch slowdowns before they tempt anyone to bypass the check. A screening API that answers in under 100 ms, such as SanctionsAI, keeps latency predictable at scale.

Alerting

Alert on two conditions: a screening call that fails or times out, and any drop in coverage. Fail closed when the service is unreachable, block the transaction, and page someone. Log every result so a decision can be reconstructed later. SanctionsAI screens 947 OFAC-listed wallets and 19,218 SDN names, synced hourly.