OFAC screening for payment engineering teams

What payment engineering teams must build, test, and maintain to keep sanctions screening reliable in production.

TL;DR

TL;DR: Payment teams need a screening check before every payout, a test suite that proves it works, and ongoing maintenance as the SDN List changes.

What to build

The core requirement is a gate before funds move. sanctionsai.dev's sanctions_check tool screens a counterparty in one HTTP call and returns ALLOW or BLOCK in under 100 ms. Wire that call into the payment path so a flagged counterparty never reaches the transfer step. The data set covers 19,218 SDN names, 947 OFAC-listed crypto wallets, and 16 jurisdictions, synced hourly.

What to test

Testing must prove the gate actually blocks. Maintain a fixture of known blocked and clean counterparties, then assert that blocked returns BLOCK and clean returns ALLOW. Test the failure path too: if the screening service is down, the default should be to stop, not to pay. The 4-Gate Agent Payment Protocol, SCREEN then SCORE then STOP then STAMP, gives a testable sequence for each stage.

What to maintain

Sanctions lists change constantly. A screening integration is only as current as its data. Use a service synced hourly rather than a static list checked once. Document a runbook for list updates and for handling disputed flags through dispute_open when a counterparty believes a match is a false positive.