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Transaction Monitoring

Regulatory · Governance, Regulation & Risk · Payments, Clearing & Settlement · Last reviewed: September 2026

Transaction monitoring is the ongoing analysis of payment activity to identify patterns, counterparties, or events that may require investigation under an institution's compliance and risk framework.

Explanation

Stablecoin monitoring can combine customer information with blockchain transaction data, address attribution, sanctions information, behavioral rules, statistical models, and machine-learning methods. Monitoring systems can generate alerts for human review or automated controls. Effective programs need governance around thresholds, false positives, data quality, model validation, escalation, and reporting.

Boundaries

Monitoring detects and evaluates activity after or around transaction events. Customer due diligence and address screening can occur before a transaction and form separate parts of the compliance framework.

Why it matters

Public blockchain data creates additional analytical signals for compliance, but interpretation remains difficult because addresses do not map one-to-one to verified identities.

Example

A provider can flag a stablecoin transfer when blockchain analytics links the destination to a high-risk service and route the case for investigation.

Related terms

Sources

  1. Nadia Pocher et al.. Detecting Anomalous Cryptocurrency Transactions: An AML/CFT Application of Machine Learning-Based Forensics. Springer, Electronic Markets 33: 37, 2023. doi:10.1007/s12525-023-00654-3 Peer-reviewed research
  2. An Approach to Anti-Money Laundering Compliance for Cryptoassets. Bank for International Settlements, BIS Bulletin No. 111, 2025. Institutional research (authors' views)
  3. From Cash to Crypto: Towards a Consistent Regulatory Approach to Illicit Payments. Bank for International Settlements, BIS Papers No. 166, 2026. Institutional research (authors' views)
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