Transaction Screening

The system reads the fields in a payment message, including names, addresses, banks, ports, vessel names and free-text descriptions, and compares them with current lists. Real-time screening holds each payment until it clears, since a payment sent to a listed party cannot easily be recalled. Batch screening runs through groups of items at set times, such as after files are received, and suits lower-risk flows. A hit puts the payment in a queue, where an analyst decides whether to release, block or reject it, and may escalate to the sanctions officer. Poor message data, long free-text fields and name variants make the work harder, and a high share of alerts are false. Firms tune rules and test them with sample payments. It sits beside transaction monitoring, which looks for suspicious patterns, but works on lists rather than behaviour. The payment queue is the last point at which a prohibited transfer can be stopped.

Among a day’s cross-border payment instructions, one names a beneficiary bank whose name closely matches a listed institution. The screening system holds the payment and raises an alert. The analyst checks the bank identifier code and address, finds the bank is different and unlisted, notes the reasons, and releases the payment within the agreed time.