Legal / Compliance
What we screen, and when.
Settle is a stablecoin payment rail. We don't underwrite by industry, but we do screen counterparties on every transaction and review high-volume merchants. Here's exactly what that looks like.
Sanctions screening (OFAC).
We screen at two points. First, at merchant onboarding: the payout address you register is checked against the OFAC SDN list and the Chainalysis sanctions API. Second, at payment time: the paying wallet is screened before the on-chain signature is requested.
A hit on either side blocks the transaction. There is no human review on a hit — the system refuses, returns a generic decline to the user, and writes a compliance-log entry. No funds move.
Volume-based review.
Once a merchant exceeds $50,000 USD-equivalent in monthly settlement, our AI compliance agent flags the account for human review. Our team verifies the merchant's domain, business legitimacy, and sanctions posture. We disclose this so both merchants and users understand: high-volume accounts are reviewed, not unreviewed.
What we don't do.
- No KYC on individual users. We don't collect government IDs, names, or addresses from the people paying through Settle checkout.
- No industry underwriting. We don't maintain a banned-categories list. The sanctions gate is the entire underwriting layer.
- No chargeback-rate freezes. There are no chargebacks on stablecoin rails, so there is nothing to freeze on.
- No third-party data sharing. We don't share business-level data except where compelled by law (subpoena, court order, regulatory request).
Why this exists.
Stablecoin rails are not a regulatory escape hatch. We're transparent about what we screen because pretending otherwise harms legitimate merchants when the inevitable subpoena arrives. A merchant who knew the screening posture going in is a merchant who can answer questions calmly.
Questions about compliance posture: hi@settle.xxx with subject line [COMPLIANCE].