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George Kioko
George Kioko

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OFAC Sanctions Screening for $0.01 Per Entity (No Enterprise Contract)

#saas

If you work in compliance, you already know the pain. Sanctions screening tools from the big vendors cost $10,000 to $50,000 per year. They require sales calls, procurement cycles, and a six month onboarding process before you can check a single name against the SDN list.

I built an API that does it for a penny per entity. No contracts. No minimums. No sales demo.

What It Actually Checks

The OFAC Sanctions Checker queries three major sanctions databases in a single call:

  1. US OFAC SDN List (Specially Designated Nationals) from the Treasury Department
  2. EU Consolidated Sanctions List from the European Commission
  3. UN Security Council Sanctions from the United Nations

You send a name (person or company), and it returns matches with confidence scores, match types, and the specific list where the hit was found. Fuzzy matching is included, so "Vladimir Putin" catches variations like "V. Putin" or transliterated spellings.

Why This Matters Right Now

Fintechs, crypto exchanges, and trade compliance teams all face the same problem: they need sanctions screening, but they are too small for Oracle or Dow Jones pricing. The regulatory pressure is real though. OFAC fines start at $50,000 per violation and go up to $20 million. The EU is equally aggressive.

If you are a 10 person fintech processing cross border payments, you cannot skip screening. But you also cannot justify $30K/year for a tool you might query 500 times a month.

At $0.01 per entity, 500 monthly checks costs you $5.

How It Works in Practice 

const response = await fetch(
  'https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/george.the.developer~ofac-sanctions-checker/run-sync-get-dataset-items',
  {
    method: 'POST',
    headers: {
      'Content-Type': 'application/json',
      'Authorization': 'Bearer YOUR_TOKEN'
    },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      entityName: "Acme Trading LLC",
      entityType: "company",
      checkLists: ["SDN", "EU", "UN"]
    })
  }
);

const results = await response.json();
// Returns: matches, confidence scores, list sources
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Drop that into your KYC onboarding flow, your payment processing pipeline, or your trade compliance checks. Each call takes a few seconds and costs a penny.

Who Is Using This

Two users are running it consistently right now, mostly in trade compliance workflows. The typical pattern is batch screening: uploading a list of counterparties before processing a shipment or wire transfer.

One user runs it as part of a daily cron job, checking new customers against all three lists overnight. At their volume (roughly 200 entities per day), they are spending about $60 a month instead of $30,000 a year.

The Compliance Gap Nobody Talks About

There are thousands of small businesses that should be screening but are not. Import/export companies, money service businesses, crypto OTC desks, even law firms doing cross border transactions. They skip it because the enterprise tools are priced for banks with 10,000 employees.

That is a real risk. OFAC enforcement does not care about your company size. The fines hit a 5 person MSB the same way they hit JPMorgan.

A penny per check removes the excuse.

Try It

The API is live on the Apify Store. You can test it without a credit card. Pay per event pricing means you only get charged for actual checks, not seats or subscriptions.

If you are building compliance tooling or running a fintech that needs sanctions screening without the enterprise markup, give it a shot. The worst case is you spend a dollar testing it.

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