Sanctions & compliance glossary
Plain-language explanations of the terms behind sanctions compliance: what they mean, who they apply to, and where screening fits when you are building a financial product. Educational background, not legal advice.
Anti-money laundering (AML)
Anti-money laundering (AML) is the framework of laws, regulations and internal controls designed to prevent criminals from disguising illegally obtained funds as legitimate income — and to detect and report them when they try.
Read the full definitionAsset freeze
An asset freeze is a legal measure that blocks the funds and economic resources of a designated person or entity: the assets remain nominally the owner's, but no one subject to the issuing jurisdiction may move, use, or otherwise deal with them.
Read the full definitionBlockchain analytics
Blockchain analytics is the examination of public blockchain data — transactions, addresses and their relationships — to trace how funds move, group addresses under common control, and assess the risk associated with on-chain activity.
Read the full definitionBlockchain intelligence
Blockchain intelligence is the practice of combining analysis of public blockchain data with off-chain information — attribution labels, open-source research, investigative leads — to identify the real-world actors and risks behind on-chain activity.
Read the full definitionEmbargo
An embargo is an official order by a government or international body that prohibits trade, finance or other dealings with a country, region, sector or activity. It is comprehensive when it covers nearly all dealings with the target and partial when it restricts one category, such as arms or oil.
Read the full definitionMoney laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising the origin of illegally obtained funds — moving them through a sequence of transactions and intermediaries until they appear to come from a legitimate source.
Read the full definitionOFAC
OFAC — the Office of Foreign Assets Control — is the office of the US Department of the Treasury that administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions against targeted countries, regimes, terrorists, narcotics traffickers and other threats to US national security, foreign policy or economy. It designates sanctioned parties and publishes them on lists, blocks their property, licenses exceptions and imposes civil penalties for violations.
Read the full definitionSanctions
A sanction is a legally binding restriction that a government or international body places on dealings with a named person, company, vessel, country or crypto wallet address. Sanctions, plural, are the programs built from those measures, imposed to advance foreign-policy and national-security goals.
Read the full definitionSanctions screening
Sanctions screening is the process of checking identifiers — names, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, email addresses, websites, government ID numbers and countries — against sanctions lists to determine whether a counterparty is designated before doing business with them.
Read the full definitionShell company
A shell company is a legal entity — a corporation, limited liability company or trust — that has no physical presence beyond a mailing address, no employees and little or no independent economic activity. It exists on paper to hold assets, receive payments or own other companies, and it is legal until the purpose it is used for is not.
Read the full definitionTransaction monitoring
Transaction monitoring is the ongoing analysis of customer transactions — in real time or in batches — to detect patterns consistent with money laundering, fraud, sanctions evasion or other financial crime, and to raise alerts for investigation.
Read the full definitionVirtual Asset Service Provider (VASP)
A virtual asset service provider (VASP) is a business that conducts virtual-asset activities for or on behalf of customers — exchanging crypto for fiat or other crypto, transferring it, safekeeping it, or providing financial services around its issuance — as defined by the Financial Action Task Force.
Read the full definitionNeed to check a name right now? Use the free OFAC SDN search. Looking for the screening capabilities themselves? Browse all solutions or the technical documentation.
Put the definitions to work
Get a free API key and screen your first identifier in minutes.
14-day free trial. No credit card required.