Real-time screening enables financial institutions to assess sanctions, AML awareness, and risk exposure instantly at the point of activity. Within the Facctum platform, this capability underpins solutions such as Customer Screening, Payment Screening, and Transaction Monitoring, where decisions must be made without delay. Instead of relying on batch processing or periodic rescreening, real-time screening allows compliance decisions to be made when customers are onboarded, payments are initiated, or transactions occur.

For modern financial services, where speed, scale, and regulatory scrutiny continue to increase, real-time screening is no longer optional. It is a foundational capability for maintaining effective, defensible compliance without introducing friction into customer or payment journeys.

Why Real-Time Screening Is Needed

Traditional batch-based screening models were designed for slower, more predictable financial environments. Today, they struggle to keep pace with instant payments, digital onboarding, and continuously changing sanctions regimes.

Without real-time screening, organisations face delayed risk detection, increased false positives, and exposure to regulatory breaches when prohibited activity is only identified after the fact. As regulators increasingly expect controls to operate at the moment of risk, legacy approaches create both compliance and operational challenges.

How Real-Time Screening Works

Real-time screening operates by evaluating customers, payments, or transactions immediately as activity occurs. This process typically involves several coordinated steps.

First, relevant data is captured at the point of action, such as customer identity information during onboarding or transaction attributes during payment initiation. This data is then screened against up-to-date sanctions lists, watchlists, and risk indicators.

Screening logic applies a combination of deterministic rules, matching algorithms, and configurable thresholds to assess potential risk. Where potential matches or anomalies are identified, the system generates an outcome in real time, allowing the activity to proceed, be paused, or be flagged for further review.

The result is an immediate, auditable decision that aligns compliance controls with operational reality.

What Makes Facctum’s Approach Different

Facctum’s real-time screening capability is designed to operate natively at speed without sacrificing transparency or control. Screening logic is configurable, explainable, and built to handle high volumes without relying on post-event remediation.

Rather than treating real-time screening as a single monolithic process, Facctum supports modular deployment, allowing organisations to apply real-time controls where they add the most value. This ensures compliance teams retain oversight while enabling business teams to maintain seamless customer and payment experiences.

Where Real-Time Screening Is Used

Real-time screening supports a wide range of compliance workflows across financial services, particularly within solutions such as Customer Screening, Payment Screening, and Transaction Monitoring, including:

• Customer onboarding and identity verification

• Instant and real-time payments

• High-risk or high-value transactions

• Ongoing customer activity monitoring

• Event-driven rescreening triggered by data or risk changes

These use cases benefit from immediate risk assessment without introducing unnecessary delays or manual intervention.

How Real-Time Screening Fits Into The Platform

Real-time screening is a core capability that integrates with other platform functions such as watchlist management, alert adjudication, and transaction monitoring. It works alongside batch and continuous screening models, ensuring organisations can apply the appropriate level of control based on context and regulatory expectations.

By embedding real-time screening within a broader, modular platform, Facctum enables compliance teams to evolve their controls incrementally rather than replacing entire systems.

Build Real-Time Compliance Into Your Workflows

Explore how real-time screening can be applied across your compliance operations. Speak with the Facctum team to understand how this capability fits into your existing systems.