OFAC screening for payment security

How sanctions screening doubles as a security control that protects payment flows from sanctioned counterparties.

TL;DR

TL;DR: Screening is both a compliance and a security control: it blocks payments to sanctioned parties before funds are lost or exposure is created.

Security, not just compliance

Sanctions screening is often framed as legal compliance, but it is also a real security control. A payment to a sanctioned wallet is irreversible on-chain, so the only point of protection is before settlement. screening prevents a transaction that cannot be clawed back. OFAC strict liability adds to the cost: penalties start at $356,000 per violation.

How the control works

sanctionsai.dev's sanctions_check inspects a counterparty in one HTTP call under 100 ms and returns ALLOW or BLOCK. A BLOCK result stops the payment before it executes, which is the security property that matters. The check runs against 19,218 SDN names and 947 OFAC-listed crypto wallets, synced hourly.

Building defense in depth

Layer the check with risk_score to flag borderline counterparties and dispute_open to review false positives. Together with SCREEN, SCORE, STOP, STAMP, these form a sequence where a sanctioned destination is stopped at the earliest possible step, before any funds leave the system.