# Where Compass fits, and where it doesn't

One API connects your platform to onchain assets and markets. Custody, monetization and the customer relationship stay with you. This page draws the line between the two.

Published: 2026-10-18
Author: Compass Labs
Tags: Infrastructure, Non-custodial, Tokenized Assets, Fintech
Canonical: https://www.compasslabs.ai/blog/where-compass-fits-and-where-it-doesnt

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Compass is the API a financial platform uses to launch onchain financial products: yield, loans, trading and tokenized assets. You integrate once. Compass builds each transaction and supplies the data, your customer's wallet or your custodian signs, and the assets move directly to the issuer or market. Compass never holds the assets and is never your counterparty.

The tables below are as specific about what Compass will not do for you as about what it will.

Figures are current as of September 2026.

## What you can launch on Compass

Compass runs six product lines on the same API. A platform usually starts with one and adds the others without a new integration.

<figure class="bl-table">
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Product line</th>
<th>What it does</th>
<th>Typical user</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Yield</td>
<td>Customer balances earn in lending markets and tokenized funds, and can be rebalanced between them</td>
<td>Neobanks, wallets and fintechs paying a return on stablecoin balances</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Loans</td>
<td>Customers borrow against assets they already hold, with collateral valued around the clock</td>
<td>Fintechs, exchanges and banks offering asset-backed loans</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Trading</td>
<td>Swaps across trading venues, 24 hours a day</td>
<td>Wallets, exchanges and brokers</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Tokenized assets</td>
<td>Coming soon. Tokenized funds, treasuries and equities from several issuers through one interface, being built with our issuer partners</td>
<td>Wealth platforms, fintechs, asset managers and banks</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Multi-step products</td>
<td>Deposit, borrow, swap, reinvest, repay and exit combined into a single transaction</td>
<td>Platforms offering leveraged or structured products, and treasury teams</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Data and reporting</td>
<td>Rates, prices and market data read directly from the blockchain, plus positions and transaction history</td>
<td>Every platform, alongside any product above</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</figure>

Around all six, Compass handles your own fee logic, so you decide what you charge your customers.

The same infrastructure is available to AI agents through an agent interface, with wallet signatures and limits preserved.

The multi-step line is where the saving is largest. A product that lets a customer earn on a tokenized fund, borrow against it, reinvest and exit on demand takes 37 separate transactions across three venues when built directly. Through Compass it is one API call.

## What stays with you, or with someone else

An onchain product needs more than Compass. Each row below is a job someone has to do, and that someone is not us.

<figure class="bl-table">
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Job</th>
<th>Who owns it</th>
<th>Why it sits there</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Holding customer assets or keys</td>
<td>Your wallet or custody provider, or the customer</td>
<td>Compass returns a transaction to sign. Funds sit in an onchain account only the customer can sign for. There is no pooled Compass vault. Taking custody would make us a counterparty, which is what institutions want to avoid.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Choosing products or strategies</td>
<td>You</td>
<td>Compass has no investment discretion. You decide which assets and markets your customers see.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Issuing the asset</td>
<td>The issuer or tokenization platform</td>
<td>Compass connects to tokenized assets. It does not create them.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Deciding who may hold a permissioned asset</td>
<td>The issuer</td>
<td>The issuer sets eligibility and approves wallets. Compass maps those requirements into the API so you do not build a separate flow per issuer.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Verifying your customers</td>
<td>You</td>
<td>The customer relationship and its checks stay with the platform.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Fiat rails and banking</td>
<td>Your bank or payments provider</td>
<td>Compass starts once money is in a stablecoin or a tokenized asset.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Lending from a balance sheet</td>
<td>The lending markets</td>
<td>Compass is software. It is not a lender, a broker or an asset manager.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Guaranteeing a return</td>
<td>No party</td>
<td>Returns move with the asset and the market, and positions can lose value.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</figure>

## The five roles in a live product

A working product has five roles. Most platforms already fill two or three of them.

<figure class="bl-table">
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Role</th>
<th>Usually</th>
<th>What they control</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Platform</td>
<td>You</td>
<td>The customer, the front end, how you monetize, and which products are offered</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Wallet or custody provider</td>
<td>Your existing provider</td>
<td>Keys and signing</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Compass</td>
<td>Infrastructure provider</td>
<td>Transaction building, connections to assets and markets, data, fee logic, reporting</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Issuer</td>
<td>An asset manager or tokenization platform</td>
<td>The asset, its eligibility rules, subscriptions and redemptions</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Markets</td>
<td>Onchain lending and trading venues</td>
<td>Where assets are lent, borrowed against and exchanged</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</figure>

The wallet or custody decision is the one that most often holds up a launch. Compass works with whichever provider you choose, so if you already have one, nothing changes. If you do not, start that selection in parallel with the integration.

Compass's infrastructure partners include Turnkey, Para (embedded wallets) and Sly.

## How is Compass different from a yield provider, a protocol API or an issuer API?

These three get shortlisted alongside Compass most often. Each goes deep on one thing. Compass connects across them.

<figure class="bl-table">
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Option</th>
<th>What it gives you</th>
<th>Where it stops</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Yield provider</td>
<td>One finished yield product, often run through the provider's own vault</td>
<td>Yield only. Loans, trading and tokenized assets each need another provider. Where funds pass through the provider's contracts, you take on an extra counterparty.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Protocol API</td>
<td>Direct access to one lending or trading protocol</td>
<td>That protocol only. Asset data, swaps, other markets and your own fee collection are separate integrations.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Issuer API or portal</td>
<td>Direct access to one issuer's assets</td>
<td>That issuer only. Every further issuer is a new onboarding model, asset standard and integration, and none of them lets the customer borrow against or trade the asset.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Compass</td>
<td>One integration across yield, loans, trading and tokenized assets, on many markets and issuers</td>
<td>No custody, no strategy selection, no issuance. See the table above.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</figure>

If you only ever want one product from one issuer, going direct is a perfectly rational choice. Compass becomes valuable when you want a product shelf.

Three properties separate Compass from the options above:

- **Neutral.** An issuer can distribute its own assets, but not a competitor's. Compass is not an issuer, so it connects to all of them. Issuers send their own clients to Compass for this reason.
- **Composable.** Yield is one call. The same integration supports loans, collateral, leverage and trading, and can combine several assets, markets and networks in a single transaction. A leveraged position on a tokenized money market fund cannot be built through a yield API alone.
- **Non-custodial.** Compass builds the transaction and never holds or routes the funds. It adds no pooled vault of its own. This is the main reason large institutions can work with it.

We see platforms that began with a single-purpose API come to Compass once the second product arrives. By then they are maintaining a lending API, an asset data API, a swap API and their own fee contract.

<div class="post-cta">
  <p><strong>Launching more than one onchain product?</strong> Tell us what you are building and we will show you what one integration covers.</p>
  <a class="btn-primary" href="https://calendly.com/elisabeth-compasslabs/30min">Book a 30-minute call with the Compass team <span class="arr" aria-hidden="true">→</span></a>
</div>

## Is Compass right for what you are building?

These are the use cases we hear most, with our honest read on each.

<figure class="bl-table">
<table>
<thead>
<tr>
<th>Use case</th>
<th>Fit</th>
<th>Reasoning</th>
</tr>
</thead>
<tbody>
<tr>
<td>Stablecoin balances earning yield inside your app</td>
<td>Strong</td>
<td>The most common starting point. Live in production with neobanks and wallets today.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Loans against assets your customers hold</td>
<td>Strong</td>
<td>Collateral, borrowing and repayment run through the same integration as yield.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>24/7 trading inside a wallet or exchange</td>
<td>Strong</td>
<td>Swaps across venues, with your own fee on top.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Leveraged or multi-step products</td>
<td>Strong</td>
<td>Many steps combined into one transaction. This is the hardest part to build in-house.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Treasury float moved in and out of markets</td>
<td>Strong</td>
<td>The same yield and rebalancing calls, signed by your own custodian.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>AI agents acting for your customers</td>
<td>Strong</td>
<td>Agent interface is live, with signatures and limits preserved.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>A shelf of tokenized funds from several issuers</td>
<td>In development (some already live!)</td>
<td>Being built with issuer and tokenizer partners including WisdomTree, Centrifuge, Ondo, IXS and Etherfuse. The issuer still approves each holder of a permissioned asset.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>One product from one issuer, permanently</td>
<td>Not the best fit</td>
<td>Going direct to that issuer is simpler.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Someone to choose and manage the strategy for you</td>
<td>Not a fit</td>
<td>Compass has no investment discretion. Appoint an asset manager, and reach their products through Compass.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Custody of customer assets</td>
<td>Not a fit</td>
<td>Sits alongside Compass. Appoint a wallet or custody provider.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Managing fiat cash</td>
<td>Not a fit</td>
<td>You need a bank or a payments provider.</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</figure>

## Who controls the money?

Your customer or your custodian does, at every step. Take a customer with one dollar of stablecoin who wants to earn yield through your app:

1. Your app calls Compass with the requested action.
2. Compass builds the transaction and returns it.
3. The customer's wallet or your custodian signs it.
4. The transaction settles directly with the market or issuer.

The resulting position sits in the customer's wallet or custody setup. No Compass key can move it.

## How long does a launch take?

A matter of days for the integration itself. The total depends on you: larger institutions add security review, procurement, legal and risk approval, and those take longer than the API work. Start them in parallel.

## Frequently asked questions

- **Is Compass custodial?** No. Compass builds transactions and returns them for signing. It never holds assets or keys and adds no vault of its own.
- **Do we have to change our wallet or custody provider?** No. Compass works with the provider you already use.
- **Can we start with yield and add loans later?** Yes. Every product line runs on the same integration, so adding one does not mean a new vendor or a new build.
- **Why not go direct to an issuer or a protocol?** For one product from one provider, you can. Each further asset, issuer or market is then a separate integration that you maintain. Compass replaces those with one.
- **How do we make money on it?** You set your own fee on each product, and Compass handles the fee logic. Compass takes basis points on the yield earned or volume traded.
- **Does Compass guarantee a return?** No. Returns vary with the asset and market, and positions can lose value.
- **Do we need onchain engineers?** No. Your team integrates one API. Compass maintains the connections underneath it.
- **Not sure where your product falls?** [Send us what you are building](mailto:contact@compasslabs.ai) and we will tell you plainly whether Compass fits.

## Ready to build?

Start at [docs.compasslabs.ai](https://docs.compasslabs.ai), or talk to us at [compasslabs.ai](https://www.compasslabs.ai).