Denied Party Checks screen customer information against the lists of individuals and entities U.S. merchants are legally prohibited from doing business with — maintained by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and several other federal agencies.
What these solutions typically offer
- Order screening without significant custom coding
- Automated updates as government lists change
- Fuzzy-logic matching to catch abbreviations and misspellings, not just exact matches
- Coverage across the United States, Europe, and Asia
The six lists checked
- SDN List (Department of Treasury)
- Denied Persons List (Department of Commerce)
- Entity List (Department of Commerce)
- Embargoed Countries List
- International Traffic in Arms Debarment List (State Department)
- Sanctions List (State Department)
Implementation options
Pay per transaction through a service bureau, or subscribe monthly or quarterly for software with regular updates. Building in-house is possible, but means taking on continuous monitoring and manually loading updates from the Special Designated Nationals (SDN) List yourself. Some payment gateways include this screening as a complimentary feature of standard authorization — worth checking before paying for a separate service.
What happens on a match
This check runs before authorization or fraud screening. A match halts the transaction outright, and a customer service agent should review it manually before anything proceeds further — this isn't a check to auto-override.