A background check for money
Apps that move money, including crypto apps, are required to make sure they are not dealing with sanctioned people, companies or wallets. Clearlist does that check for them, instantly, and keeps the proof. This page explains it without the code.
- Step 1
Your app asks
Before a user signs up or money moves, the app sends us one thing to check: a wallet address, a person's name, a country, or a whole transaction.
- Step 2
We check everywhere that matters
Every official government sanctions list (US, EU, UK, UN), public records of hacker, mixer and scam wallets, and who that wallet has actually transacted with.
- Step 3
You get an answer you can act on
In well under a second: allow, review, or block. With the reason in plain English and the evidence attached, so you can show it to a user, a bank, or a regulator.
Nothing matched. The app lets the sign-up or payment through. This is the answer for almost everyone.
Something looks like a match but is not certain, for example a common name. A human takes a look; one click clears or confirms it.
A definite match: a listed wallet, or a name confirmed by a date of birth or ID. The app stops the transaction and has the record to prove why.
Who it is for
Anyone whose bank or partner is about to ask “what do you do about sanctions?” In practice, six kinds of team, each with its own moment.
- Stablecoin payment apps and non-custodial wallets
Your ramp provider, card issuer or bank partner asks for your sanctions program before they will move the first dollar.
- Exchanges and cash on/off ramps
You hold customer funds, so a regulator or banking partner expects screening at onboarding and on every withdrawal, with records.
- DeFi frontends, launchpads and NFT marketplaces
A sanctioned address connects to your interface and you have no record of having checked. Frontends have been the enforcement target before.
- Fintechs and neobanks adding crypto
Your bank partner already requires name and country screening; now you need wallet addresses screened too, with evidence in one format.
- New chains and foundationsoracle: testnet pending
Builders on your chain cannot get incumbents to cover it for months, and every one of them is being asked the same compliance question.
- AI-agent payment platformsearly
Agents paying agents means nobody is watching the counterparty. The screen has to sit inside the payment path, not in a dashboard someone checks later.
Which blockchains
Clearlist screens addresses on 45 chains today: Solana, Ethereum, Base, BNB Chain, Robinhood Chain and every other EVM chain, plus Bitcoin, Tron and more. On 32 of them (Solana and the EVM chains) it also looks at who the wallet has transacted with. The full list, with what each chain supports, is on the docs page.
What you get beyond the check
- A permanent record of every decision, exportable, to hand to a bank or auditor.
- Ongoing monitoring: if one of your users gets listed next month, you are told the same day.
- A one-page attestation describing your screening controls, with a link you can share.
- The Compliance Pack: an AML policy, a sanctions risk assessment and a screening procedure, written from your real configuration.
Why now
Sanctions screening used to be a problem for banks and large exchanges. Five things changed.
- Stablecoins are now federally regulated in the US
- The GENIUS Act, signed in July 2025, made stablecoin issuers federally regulated. Issuers and their partners push compliance expectations down to the apps that use their coins.
- List-only screening misses the biggest mixer
- OFAC delisted Tornado Cash in March 2025. A screen that checks only the SDN list no longer flags its contracts. Clearlist keeps them as public labels, with the delisting recorded on each entry.
- The SDN list is a crypto list now
- OFAC's SDN list carries over 1,000 crypto addresses across more than 20 assets, from Bitcoin and Ethereum to Tron, Solana and privacy coins. Matching them needs every chain, not one.
- New chains launch monthly; incumbents cover them late
- Builders on a chain that launched this quarter are asked the same compliance questions as everyone else. Address screening works on a new chain immediately; exposure follows as indexers appear.
- Banks and ramps de-risk what they cannot document
- A bank, card program or ramp provider that cannot see a screening program in writing will often decline the client rather than ask twice. The attestation page and evidence exports exist for that conversation.
Questions people ask
- What is a sanctions list?
- Governments publish lists of people, companies and, increasingly, crypto wallets that it is illegal to do business with: terrorist financiers, North Korean hacking groups, sanctioned banks, drug cartels. The US list alone has about 19,000 entries and over 1,000 wallet addresses.
- Why does a small crypto app need this?
- Because its bank, payment partner, ramp provider, or app store will ask what it does about sanctions, and "nothing" ends the relationship. Regulators also fine companies that move money for listed parties, whether or not they knew.
- Do you need a licence to provide this?
- No. No regulator licenses screening vendors, and the large providers do not hold one either. What makes screening credible is pulling from the official sources, keeping a dated record of every decision, and being able to show both. That is what Clearlist does.
- Is this legal advice?
- No. Clearlist tells you what was screened, what it matched, and why. Whether a business is compliant depends on its whole program. The attestation page and the Compliance Pack describe the controls in operation; they are not an opinion on compliance.
- Where does the data come from?
- Directly from the publishers: the US Treasury (OFAC), the European Union, the UK's OFSI, and the United Nations, refreshed every few hours and versioned. Plus public, cited records of hacks, mixers and scams. No resold third-party datasets.
- What does it cost?
- Address checks are free and unlimited on every plan, plus 1,000 name, country and transaction screens a month while you build. $299 a month for a production app, $1,500 a month for a company with a bank or auditor asking, which includes the Compliance Pack. Chains and foundations can sponsor coverage for every app in their ecosystem, from $50,000 a year.
- How is this different from Chainalysis, Elliptic or TRM?
- They sell investigation tools to compliance teams at banks and large exchanges: enterprise contracts, sales calls, weeks of integration, and deep attribution graphs we do not try to match. We sell decisions to developers: self-serve, public pricing, explainable answers, first check in five minutes. The comparison page goes row by row, and pricing shows what each plan includes.