OFAC compliance for solo developers

A solo developer can meet OFAC screening with a single API call, no team and no compliance department required.

TL;DR

TL;DR: Solo developers face the same strict-liability rules as enterprises, but one screening API call before each payment covers the obligation.

The obligation does not scale down

OFAC's rules do not shrink for a one-person shop. A solo developer who ships a payment feature still carries strict liability, meaning intent is not required and civil penalties start at $356,000 per violation. The SDN list applies to any transaction a US person touches, regardless of company size.

One call is enough

The good news is that the control is a single API call. Before the payment, submit the counterparty and branch on the result: clean returns ALLOW, flagged returns BLOCK. The call completes in under 100 ms, so it fits inside any payment flow. A free tier of five checks per day with no signup and no key is enough to start, and an MCP server installs with pip install sanctions-mcp.

What to log

What matters is the record. Log each check with a timestamp, the counterparty, and the outcome. If a transaction is ever questioned, the log shows you screened before the money moved, which is exactly what a regulator would ask to see.

When you outgrow the free tier

The free tier, five checks per day, is enough to build and test. Once you ship, volume decides your next step: a paid tier starts at $19 per month for higher limits, and per-check pricing via x402 exists for variable volume. Because the screening call stays the same, moving tiers is a billing change, not a code change.