Plain answers to the questions businesses ask about sanctions screening and about the Montyris Sanctions Screening App.
About sanctions screening
What sanctions screening is, why every business that moves money, goods, or services across borders needs it, and what happens when it isn't done.
Sanctions screening is the process of checking the people, companies, vessels, aircraft, banks, ports and other parties you deal with against official government sanctions lists. The goal is to find out, before a transaction happens, whether a counterparty is subject to an asset freeze, a trade restriction or another prohibition imposed by an authority such as OFAC, the UN Security Council, the EU or the UK.
Very likely, and the obligation reaches far beyond banks. OFAC guidance makes clear that every U.S. person and company must comply, and the EU, UK, UN, Canada, Australia and most other jurisdictions take the same approach: any business that operates in or trades with a jurisdiction is expected to screen. That includes importers, exporters, freight forwarders, law firms, accountants, real estate agents, manufacturers, fintechs and crypto businesses.
Penalties are severe and well documented. In 2025 and 2026 alone, OFAC settled a USD 215.99M case with an investment manager and penalised a sports academy, a machine-tool maker and a crypto wallet company, while the UK's OFSI issued its largest penalty since 2022 (over GBP 1M) and fined a bank for an automated screening tool that missed a spelling variation of a designated name. Most regimes are strict liability, so "we didn't know" is not a defence, and many cases name the business publicly.
More than most people expect. Designations can cover individuals (politicians, oligarchs, members of criminal or terrorist networks), companies (banks, shell companies, state-owned enterprises), vessels, aircraft, ports, economic free zones, whole industry sectors and, increasingly, cryptocurrency wallet addresses. Each listing carries its own restrictions, from a full asset freeze to a narrow sectoral prohibition.
Constantly. OFAC, OFSI, the EU and the UN update their lists several times a week, adding, removing, amending and moving names between programmes. A counterparty you cleared six months ago may have changed status since, which is why continuous monitoring of saved records matters as much as the first search.
Each regime has its own authority and legal basis. OFAC (US Treasury) administers US sanctions, which reach far through the US dollar and the US-persons rules. The UN Security Council issues consolidated measures that member states must implement. EU sanctions apply across all member states and EU operators. UK sanctions are administered by OFSI under HM Treasury. The lists overlap but each has its own scope and exemptions, so screening one is not the same as screening all of them.
Secondary sanctions target non-US parties that do significant business with US-sanctioned persons. A company with no direct US presence can still be cut off from the US financial system, or designated itself, if it facilitates transactions for a sanctioned entity. This is why many businesses outside the US still treat OFAC screening as mandatory.
A false positive is a potential match that turns out not to be a real sanctioned party, usually a common name, a namesake or a spelling coincidence. Each one costs reviewer time, so a tool that floods you with them becomes unworkable. Cutting false positives without missing genuine hits is one of the core quality measures of any screening tool.
KYC (Know Your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) are broad programmes covering identity verification, source-of-funds checks and suspicious-activity monitoring. Sanctions screening is one specific control inside them: the check that asks whether a party is on a prohibited list. It is the narrowest and most binary of the checks, but also the one with the harshest penalties for getting it wrong.
About the Montyris app
Setup, favorites, alerts, privacy, pricing and coverage, answered before you download.
No. Montyris is a standalone app built around direct screening. You install it, enter names and review results. There is no API to configure, no contract to negotiate and no IT project to schedule.
Montyris is a mobile app for iPhone, on the App Store, and Android, on Google Play. There is no web or desktop version: you screen from your phone or tablet.
They answer two different questions. The match score shows how closely the name you searched resembles a listed name, so you can tell a near-exact match from a loose one. The risk score, available on the paid plans, reflects the surrounding context of the listed record, such as the sanctioning authority, the jurisdiction and the subject type. Both are prioritisation indicators, not a compliance decision and not a confirmation that your counterparty is the listed person.
No. Montyris is decision-support, not legal advice and not a determination of anyone's status. Screening can produce false positives and false negatives, so you must confirm any potential match against the official source list before you act, and you remain responsible for your own compliance decisions.
Consolidated coverage across 17 jurisdictions: the United States (OFAC), the United Kingdom (OFSI), the European Union, the United Nations, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, Canada, Argentina, Australia, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. These are the official lists published by each authority, consolidated and kept up to date, and coverage expands as new programmes are added.
No, and by design. Montyris screens against official government sanctions lists only. It does not include politically exposed person (PEP) databases or adverse-media, negative-news, screening. If your programme also needs those checks, you would run them from a separate source alongside Montyris.
No. Montyris is made for the many businesses that have real screening obligations but were priced out of enterprise platforms, across trade, logistics, legal and professional services, real estate, manufacturing and crypto, alongside financial firms.
The matching engine combines fuzzy matching, phonetic encoding and cross-script transliteration, so typos, name-order swaps and variants across Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic and Chinese scripts still resolve to the right record. Generic words like "bank" or "holding" are down-weighted so they do not crowd out the distinctive parts of a name.
It returns several candidates on purpose, because missing a real hit is far worse than showing a few namesakes. You then narrow them with context filters such as country, date of birth and identifier, and the ranking puts the most relevant candidates first.
Yes, on the top plan. It lets you run a multi-name search and screen up to 10 names in one go, rather than entering them one at a time, and the results come back together so you can work through them in a single pass.
Yes, on the paid plans. Favorite a record and you receive an email alert whenever it changes on any source list. The top plan adds a watchlist: the app re-screens a saved name on a schedule and alerts you when a new match appears, and you can re-screen it yourself at any time or pause and resume monitoring without losing the entry.
Yes. As well as individuals and companies you can screen vessel names and IMO numbers, shipping entities, aircraft, crypto wallet addresses, economic free zones and other counterparty types that appear in trade, logistics and digital finance.
Yes, on the paid plans. Any result can be exported as a PDF that documents the search, the sources checked, the matches found and the decision recorded, suitable for audits and compliance files, and the paid plans also keep every check and decision in an audit trail.
The free tier lets you run occasional checks against the US sanctions lists (OFAC) only. Paid tiers add the full coverage across all 17 jurisdictions, including the EU, UK and UN, along with higher screening volume, monitoring and audit features. Plans are sold and billed through the Apple App Store and Google Play, so Montyris never handles your card details.
Yes. The free tier lets you install the app and run real checks against the US sanctions lists (OFAC) at no cost and with no card, so you can see how screening, matching and records work before you choose a paid plan.
Yes. Your searches, favorites and audit trail are confidential to your account. Your data is hosted in the European Union (OVH, in France) and processed under the GDPR, and the app handles only what is needed to screen, following principles such as data minimisation and purpose limitation.
The app tracks updates to the major sanctions lists on an ongoing basis, so results reflect the latest refresh that has been processed, with no action needed from you. Because official lists can change between refreshes, the official source should always be checked for any potential match.
Montyris is preparing to launch on the App Store and Google Play. Email info@montyris.com to join the launch list, and we will send you the release date as soon as it is confirmed.
Email the team at info@montyris.com with any question about screening, plans or your account.