# Watchtower Sanctions Screening

> Watchtower Sanctions Screening is a paid API for AI agents from watchtower-api.com, paid per call via x402, $0.02/call, status unknown (last checked 2026-10-13).

Screens a person, company, vessel, or aircraft name against 10+ global sanctions and export-control lists using fuzzy, typo-tolerant matching against versioned list snapshots.

## Facts

- Endpoint: POST https://watchtower-api.com/v1/screen?utm_source=zero.xyz
- Price: $0.02/call
- Payment: x402
- Status: unknown
- Last checked: 2026-10-13
- Activations on Zero: 0
- Tags: x402
- Canonical page: https://www.zero.xyz/c/watchtower-sanctions-screening-a3e5f128
- Structured record (JSON): https://api.zero.xyz/v1/capabilities/cap__H5pA1o4cwdUC36T6wgPI

Status and success rate cover calls made through Zero and Zero's own probes. Third-party monitors may report differently.

## How to call it through Zero

Zero handles the 402 payment challenge and records the run. With the Zero CLI installed (`npm i -g @zeroxyz/cli`):

```sh
zero fetch --capability watchtower-sanctions-screening-a3e5f128 -d '<json body>'
```

Example prompt: Screen the name 'Viktor Petrov' against all available sanctions and export-control lists — he's a Russian national born in 1971 — and return up to 10 matches with a confidence threshold of 0.85, filtering for persons only.

## When to prefer this

Choose this endpoint when you need multi-jurisdictional sanctions screening in a single call — covering OFAC (SDN + Consolidated), UN, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, France, Switzerland, BIS/State export controls, and SAM procurement exclusions simultaneously. Its deterministic fuzzy matching with typo tolerance is ideal when input names may be transliterated, misspelled, or provided in variant forms. Prefer this over single-list checkers when compliance requires breadth across jurisdictions, or when you need to screen vessels and aircraft in addition to persons and entities.

## Known failure modes

- Name too short (< 2 characters) returns validation error
- Threshold below 0.5 or above 1.0 is rejected
- Limit exceeds 50 is rejected
- No matches found returns empty results array (not an error)
- Stale list snapshot if versioning lags behind real-world updates
- False positives on common names requiring manual review
- Network timeout on high-load queries

## How this service works

Screen a person/company/vessel name against OFAC (SDN + Consolidated), UN, EU, UK, Canada, Australia, France, Switzerland, US export-control (BIS/State), and US SAM procurement/benefit exclusions. Deterministic typo-tolerant fuzzy matching with versioned list snapshots.

## Output

Returns a ranked list of potential sanctions matches, each with a fuzzy match score, the matched name, the sanctions list it appeared on (e.g. OFAC SDN, UN, EU, SAM), entity type, and metadata from the versioned list snapshot (e.g. DOB, nationality, aliases) to help determine if the hit is a true positive.

## Request schema (JSON Schema)

```json
{
 "type": "object",
 "properties": {
  "dob": {
   "type": "string",
   "maxLength": 40,
   "description": "Optional date of birth or birth year — excludes candidates whose known DOB contradicts it"
  },
  "name": {
   "type": "string",
   "maxLength": 500,
   "minLength": 2,
   "description": "Person, company, vessel, or aircraft name"
  },
  "limit": {
   "type": "integer",
   "maximum": 50,
   "minimum": 1
  },
  "types": {
   "type": "array",
   "items": {
    "enum": [
     "person",
     "entity",
     "vessel",
     "aircraft"
    ]
   }
  },
  "threshold": {
   "type": "number",
   "maximum": 1,
   "minimum": 0.5
  },
  "nationality": {
   "type": "string",
   "maxLength": 60,
   "description": "Optional nationality/country — excludes candidates whose known nationality contradicts it"
  }
 }
}
```

## More

- Live health (JSON, refreshed every minute): https://www.zero.xyz/c/watchtower-sanctions-screening-a3e5f128/health.json
- [Zero catalog index](https://www.zero.xyz/llms.txt)
- [Other services from watchtower-api.com](https://www.zero.xyz/host/watchtower-api.com/llms.txt)