Sanctions screening and compliance holds

Taria Pay checks the wallet addresses that money comes from and goes to against official sanctions lists. This page explains what is screened, when a payment or payout can be refused, what a compliance hold does to your balance, and what you see in the dashboard and the API.

The short version:

• Payments you receive are never rejected after they arrive. If a payment comes from a sanctioned address, it is placed in a compliance hold and kept out of your available balance until a human review ends.
• Money leaving Taria Pay (withdrawals, refunds, marketplace payouts) is refused when the destination is on a sanctions list.
• Only a match on an official sanctions list can refuse a money movement. Other risk information is used for review and never refuses a payout on its own.

Which lists we screen against

List	Publisher
Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons List (SDN)	U.S. Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)
UK Sanctions List	UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO), the designations OFSI enforces
Consolidated list of persons, groups and entities subject to EU financial sanctions	European Union

All three lists are refreshed once a day, each on its own. Withdrawals and refunds to a wallet address are also checked against the stablecoin issuer's own blocklist where the token exposes one, and against supplementary on-chain sanctions data. A match on any of these is treated as a sanctions match.

What is screened, and when

Money movement	Address screened	When	Effect of a sanctions match
Wallet payment at checkout	The buyer's connected wallet	Before the buyer can pay	That wallet cannot be used to pay this order
Any confirmed payment	The paying wallet	When the payment confirms	Payment is accepted, then placed in a compliance hold
Direct transfer payment	The wallets that funded the order's deposit address	When the deposit arrives	Payment is accepted, then placed in a compliance hold
Past payments	Earlier payers, against newly listed addresses	After each daily list update	Matching payment is placed in a compliance hold
Withdrawal	The destination wallet	Before your balance is debited	Withdrawal refused
Refund	The original payer wallet	Before the refund amount is reserved	Refund refused
Marketplace payout or refund	The seller's or buyer's destination wallet	Before funds are reserved	Payout or refund refused

Payments are never rejected after they arrive

A stablecoin payment has already settled on-chain by the time Taria Pay sees it. Rejecting it would not keep the funds out; it would only withhold goods from a buyer who has already paid. For that reason the paths that receive and settle a payment never block on screening. Instead, a match leads to a compliance hold (see below).

The one point where a payment can be refused is the checkout itself, before a wallet payment is made. When the buyer connects a wallet that is on a sanctions list, checkout disables wallet payment for that address and asks the buyer to pay with a different wallet. The buyer is not told why. This check never turns a buyer away because of a problem on our side: if screening data is unavailable at that moment, the buyer can pay.

Compliance holds

A compliance hold is a quarantine on one payment while a Taria Pay compliance reviewer looks at it. It is not a refusal and not a refund. Holds are placed on payments from a sanctioned address and, in some cases, on payments closely linked to one.

While a hold is active:

• The payment keeps its status. A confirmed payment stays confirmed, and the payment_intent.confirmed webhook is delivered as usual.
• For an ordinary merchant account, the held amount (the payment amount minus the platform fee) is deducted from your available balance for that chain and currency. If you already withdrew those funds, your available balance can go below zero until the review ends.
• For a marketplace order, the order funds cannot be released to the seller (see Marketplace platforms).

There is no separate webhook event or dashboard notification for a hold. What you notice is an available balance that is lower than the sum of your confirmed payments.

A review ends in one of three outcomes:

Outcome	What happens to the funds
Released	The hold is lifted and the amount returns to your available balance, or the marketplace release can proceed
Returned	The payment is refunded to where it came from. For an ordinary payment this is a full refund to the original payer wallet, and you receive payment_intent.refunded
Frozen	The funds stay where they are, out of your available balance, pending a report to the relevant issuer or authority

A payment from an address that is itself on a sanctions list is never returned to that address, because sending funds to a sanctioned party is itself a violation. Such a hold can only be released after review or frozen.

Payouts: withdrawals and refunds

Before any money leaves Taria Pay, the destination address is screened. A refusal happens before your balance is debited or a refund amount is reserved, so nothing is held back and nothing needs to be undone.

When screening data is out of date

If the sanctions list update has not succeeded for 48 hours, withdrawals and refunds are paused instead of being let through without a current check. The API answers 503 with code screening_stale (or screening_unavailable if the list has never been loaded). This is a temporary condition on our side, not a finding about your address. Retry later; payments keep arriving and confirming normally while payouts are paused.

Error responses

Withdrawals (POST /v1/withdrawals and the dashboard), refunds (POST /v1/payment-intents/:paymentId/refunds, the dashboard Refund action and approving a buyer refund request) and marketplace payouts return these errors:

HTTP status	code	Meaning	What to do
403	address_sanctioned	The destination address is on a sanctions list and cannot receive funds	Do not retry. For a withdrawal, do not use this address. For a refund, contact support
503	screening_stale	The sanctions list has not refreshed within 48 hours; payouts are paused	Retry later
503	screening_unavailable	Sanctions data is not available yet; payouts are paused	Retry later

The response body carries the code next to a readable message:

{
  "error": "This address appears on a sanctions list and cannot receive funds",
  "code": "address_sanctioned"
}

With the SDK, the error is a TariaPayError whose status is the HTTP status; the response body, including code, is in error.details:

import { TariaPayError } from "@tariapay/sdk";

try {
  await tariapay.paymentIntents.refund(paymentId, { reason: "Order canceled" });
} catch (error) {
  if (error instanceof TariaPayError) {
    const code = (error.details as { code?: string } | undefined)?.code;
    if (code === "address_sanctioned") {
      // Do not retry; contact support@tariapay.com with the paymentId
    } else if (code === "screening_stale" || code === "screening_unavailable") {
      // Temporary; retry later
    }
  }
}

Refunds to a sanctioned payer

Refunds always go to the original payer wallet, and you cannot choose a different address. If that wallet is on a sanctions list, the refund is refused with address_sanctioned and nothing is reserved from your balance. Contact support; do not tell the buyer to retry the refund.

Marketplace platforms

If you run a marketplace on Taria Pay, a compliance hold blocks the release of that order's funds to the seller. POST /v1/marketplace/order-funds/:paymentIntentId/release answers 409 with code compliance_hold while the hold is active. Keep the order in your settlement queue and retry the release later; the release is idempotent and succeeds once the hold is released. Seller withdrawals and buyer refunds on the marketplace are screened like any other payout and can return address_sanctioned, screening_stale or screening_unavailable.

Sanctions matches and risk review

Besides the official sanctions lists, Taria Pay keeps other risk information, such as reports of scam addresses and addresses linked to high-risk activity. This information is handled differently:

	Sanctions match	Other risk information
Source	Official government sanctions lists and issuer blocklists	Platform-maintained risk data
Refuses a withdrawal, refund or payout	Yes	No
Refuses a wallet at checkout	Yes	No
Can lead to a compliance hold	Yes	Only for the higher risk levels, for human review
Can be returned to the payer after review	No	Yes

Most risk information only adds a note for our reviewers and has no effect on your payments or payouts.

What you should do

• A withdrawal is refused with address_sanctioned. Do not retry to the same address and do not try to route the funds there another way. If the address is one of your own payout wallets, contact support.
• A refund is refused with address_sanctioned. Contact support with the paymentId. Keep the order in a pending refund state in your own system.
• A payout is refused with screening_stale or screening_unavailable. Wait and retry; no action is needed on your side.
• Your available balance is lower than expected. Compare it with your confirmed payments and withdrawals in Payouts. If the difference matches one payment's amount minus the fee, ask support whether that payment is under review.

Contact support@tariapay.com from your merchant login email and include:

• The paymentId, withdrawal ID or refund ID involved
• Your own order ID, if any
• The address and network shown in the error or the transaction
• The time of the attempt and the error code you received

Support can tell you whether a payment is under review and what is needed to complete it. For legal reasons we may not be able to share which list an address matched.

Frequently asked questions

Does screening slow down checkout? The checkout check runs once per connected wallet. Slower data sources get about a second and a half; if they cannot answer in time, the buyer can still pay.

Will a hold cancel the order or change its status? No. The payment status and webhooks are unchanged. A hold only affects whether the funds can be withdrawn or released.

Can a buyer avoid the checkout check by paying with a direct transfer? They can send the transfer, but the wallets that funded the deposit address are screened when it arrives, and a match places the payment in a compliance hold.

Is the payout wallet I verified in the dashboard screened? Every withdrawal is screened when it is made, including withdrawals to a verified payout wallet or a whitelisted address. An address that is listed later is refused from that point on.

What happens to a buyer refund request when the refund is refused? The request stays open as requested, with the failure recorded, and no funds are reserved. Contact support before approving it again.

Next steps

• Withdrawals and balances: Payouts
• Refunds from the dashboard: Orders and transactions
• Error format and endpoints: API reference