Terms of Service

Last updated 31 August 2026

The service

KYCWire provides an API and web tools that screen names of people, organisations, vessels and aircraft against official sanctions lists published by OFAC (US Treasury), the European Union, the UK FCDO and the UN Security Council. You may use it only in accordance with these terms and applicable law.

The service is operated by KYCWire (operated by the account owner; company details on request at [email protected]).

What the service is — and is not

KYCWire is a screening tool. It returns candidate matches with a similarity score; the decision whether a person or entity is in fact the listed one, and what to do about it, is yours. Results are not legal advice and do not by themselves establish compliance with any sanctions, AML or KYC obligation.

Matching is probabilistic. A high score can be a false positive (a different person with a similar name); a low score or no match does not prove that a person is not sanctioned — for example if the name is misspelled in the source list or the person is listed under an alias we could not link. Review matches with a human before acting on them.

We cover the lists named on the Coverage page and nothing else. We do not provide politically-exposed-person (PEP) data or adverse-media screening.

Accounts and keys

You are responsible for keeping your API keys secret and for all requests made with them. Revoke a key immediately if you suspect it has leaked.

One person or organisation may hold one free account. Automated creation of accounts is prohibited.

Acceptable use

You may not use the service to harass or profile individuals outside a legitimate compliance, risk or due-diligence purpose; to circumvent quotas and rate limits; or to resell raw list data as your own product. Screening results may be stored and shared within your organisation and with your regulators and auditors.

We may suspend keys or accounts that breach these rules. Where practical we will warn you first.

Your data

Names and identifiers you submit are personal data of your customers. You are the controller of that data; we process it on your instructions under the Data Processing Agreement. By default we keep each screening record (query and result) for the retention period of your plan so you have an audit trail; send store: false to keep only a hash of the query.

Plans, payment and cancellation

Paid plans renew automatically at the end of each billing period until cancelled. You can cancel from the billing page; the plan stays active until the period ends. Prepaid (crypto) plans do not renew.

Quotas reset on the first day of each calendar month. Unused checks do not carry over. Overage billing applies only if you enable it.

Refunds are handled according to the Refund Policy.

Availability and liability

We aim for high availability and refresh lists every six hours, but do not guarantee uninterrupted service or that any list is current at a given moment; publication times of each source are shown on the status page and in every API response.

The service is provided as is. To the extent permitted by law, we are not liable for decisions you take on the basis of screening results, and our total liability is limited to the fees you paid in the three months before the claim.

We may change these terms; material changes are announced by email at least 14 days in advance.