Overview

Bring Your Own Screening Check adds a manual review step to your transaction screening workflow. After automatic AML screening completes, transactions that match your pre-screening rules enter a waiting state. Your team then decides to accept or reject each transaction before Travel Rule processing begins.

Bring Your Own Screening Check applies to both incoming and outgoing transactions. When a transaction reaches this step, it enters a PENDING state and waits for your verdict. If no verdict is submitted before the configured timeout, Fireblocks automatically rejects the transaction.

This guide covers how Bring Your Own Screening Check works, when transactions are held for review, and what your team needs to get started. For API integration details, see Bring Your Own Screening Check Developer Guide.

How it works

Fireblocks transaction screening runs three checks in sequence:

1. Automatic AML: Chainalysis or Elliptic screens the transaction automatically.
2. Bring Your Own Screening Check (manual AML): If enabled and active, eligible transactions pause for a human verdict.
3. Travel Rule: Compliance data is exchanged with the counterparty VASP (Virtual Asset Service Provider), the financial institution on the other side of the transaction.

Your pre-screening rules control which transactions pause for review and which skip ahead. Only transactions that match a SCREEN rule are held. All other transactions continue to the Travel Rule step without delay.

Screening flow

When a transaction reaches the Bring Your Own Screening Check step, it follows this path:

1. Automatic AML screening completes.
2. Fireblocks evaluates pre-screening rules against the transaction.
3. If the transaction matches a PASS rule, it skips review and continues to Travel Rule.
4. If the transaction matches a SCREEN rule, it enters a waiting state for your verdict.
5. Your team submits an ACCEPT or REJECT verdict through the API.
6. If no verdict is submitted before the timeout, Fireblocks automatically rejects the transaction.
7. The transaction continues to Travel Rule processing or completion.

Prerequisites

Before you can use Bring Your Own Screening Check, two enablement steps are required:

1. Tenant enablement: Fireblocks enables the feature for your workspace at the tenant level. Contact your Customer Success Manager or support team to request this.
2. Activation: Once Fireblocks enables the feature, configure your pre-screening rules and timeouts, then activate through the API. Transactions are not held for review until the feature is both enabled and active.

Best practices

Submit verdicts promptly

Transactions are blocked until your team submits a verdict. Build your review workflow to respond well within the configured timeout. This is especially important for outgoing transactions, where the timeout is bounded by JWT lifetime.

Use pre-acceptance for known decisions

If your system can make a decision before the review step activates (e.g., through automated rules on your side), submit the verdict early. Fireblocks stores the verdict and applies it automatically when the transaction reaches the waiting state, with no delay.

Use idempotency keys

Always include an idempotency key when submitting verdicts to prevent duplicate submissions on retries.

Log all verdict submissions

Maintain an audit trail of submitted verdicts, including the timestamp and the user or system that triggered each submission. This supports compliance workflows and troubleshooting.

Handle conflicts gracefully

A 409 Conflict response means a verdict is already recorded or the transaction has moved past the review step. Log the response and do not retry.

Do not assume synchronous processing

A successful verdict response confirms Fireblocks accepted the verdict, not that the transaction has moved to the next step. Build your integration to handle the asynchronous flow.