What ZendFi Protects Against
ZendFi risk controls are designed to reduce:- rapid payment abuse from a single wallet
- high-velocity traffic from a single IP
- unusual spend spikes over short windows
- suspicious first-time high-value wallet behavior
- payment flows involving sanctioned wallets at enforced checkpoints
To keep detection effective, ZendFi does not publicly disclose all rule internals or exact production thresholds.
How Risk Evaluation Works
Fraud and sanctions checks happen in multiple stages:Stage 1: Payment creation
At creation time, ZendFi performs:- sanctions screening on the merchant wallet
- blocked IP checks
- fraud pre-check scoring for the current create request
- Allow: payment is created normally
- Allow with review: payment is created with a manual-review marker
- Block: request is rejected before payment creation
Stage 2: Checkout transaction build
Before a transaction is built, ZendFi screens the customer payer wallet for sanctions and re-evaluates fraud risk. This prevents high-risk transactions from advancing to signature flow.Stage 3: Submission gates
During both standard and gasless submission, ZendFi applies a fraud-score gate and a submit-time fraud re-check to prevent stale-risk bypasses.Current implementation enforces sanctions checks at payment creation (merchant wallet) and transaction build (customer wallet). Submission-stage enforcement is fraud-based.
Risk Outcomes You May See
ZendFi can apply one of three actions:| Outcome | What it means | Typical user experience |
|---|---|---|
| Allowed | Low risk | Checkout proceeds normally |
| Flagged for review | Elevated but non-blocking risk | Payment is created as pending with a review flag |
| Blocked | High risk or sanctions hit | Request or submission is rejected |
Sanctions Screening (OFAC)
ZendFi sanctions controls include:- in-memory wallet screening for fast lookups
- daily background refresh from OFAC publication exports
- optional compliance-managed seed list at startup for baseline protection
Recommended production policy
- Use a compliance-approved startup seed list for sanctioned Solana wallets.
- Keep daily refresh enabled.
- Enable strict startup mode once your approved seed list is operational.
Sanctions list lifecycle and startup hardening controls are managed by ZendFi platform operations. Merchants do not need to configure OFAC environment variables in their integrations.
Merchant Best Practices
To reduce friction and false positives:- Use realistic payment amounts and avoid unusual one-off spikes.
- Attach stable order metadata so support teams can investigate quickly.
- Keep customer checkout flows consistent (wallet, session, and network behavior).
- Retry responsibly with idempotency and clear UX when a payment is blocked.
- Define an internal review process for high-value or first-time customers.
Customer Messaging Guidance
When a payment is blocked or held for review, customer-facing copy should be clear and neutral:- avoid accusatory language
- ask customer to retry or contact support
- provide a reference ID (payment ID) for faster resolution
“Your payment needs additional review for security checks. Please contact support with your payment ID.”
Operational Checklist
- Monitor blocked and flagged payment rates.
- Review recurring blocked wallets and IPs for abuse patterns.
- Re-tune thresholds using observed false-positive and fraud-loss rates.
Need Help?
If your team needs help tuning fraud controls or compliance rollout, contact support with:- payment IDs affected
- timestamps and environment (
testorlive) - expected customer behavior vs observed outcome