Full source in your repository
Not a license. Not an escrow arrangement. Your repo, your code, from the first commit.
Engagement pricing
Start at $45,000. Scale only when it's earned.
You don't commit to a money-supply system on day one. A three-week Feasibility Sprint gives your board a costed answer: the right instrument, a target architecture, and a core-integration assessment. Every dollar of it credits toward the build if you proceed.
- Fixed fee at every stage, no open-ended hours
- Sprint fee credits 100% toward the Pilot
- You own the code regardless of what comes next
All prices here are estimates for planning, indicative and subject to a scoped Statement of Work. The Feasibility Sprint replaces every range on this page with a fixed number for your institution.
The ladder
Four stages. Four exits.
Each stage is a fixed fee with a defined deliverable and a real exit. If you stop after the Sprint, you keep a signed-off requirements document your board can act on. If you stop after the Pilot, you keep a working system and a test suite. Nothing here is a subscription you can't leave.
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1
Feasibility Sprint
$45,000Discovery with your executive sponsor, compliance lead, and IT lead. A stablecoin-vs-tokenized-deposit recommendation, target architecture, core-integration assessment, and a costed roadmap.
Deliverable: requirements document + architecture brief + costed roadmapCredited in full against the Pilot Build if you proceed within 90 days.
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2
Pilot Build
Typically $200,000–$325,000A working system on a private permissioned chain: token contract, role separation, on-chain compliance and allowlisting, reserve reconciliation, and a core integration against your test environment. A full lifecycle dry-run (allowlist, mint, transfer, freeze, seize, redeem) with your ops team watching.
Deliverable: audit-ready pilot + full test suite + documented dry-runPriced on: institution size, core platform, and instrument choice. The Sprint produces your exact number.
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3
Production Deployment
Typically $300,000–$500,000Independent security audit, full remediation, multi-sig and timelock on every privileged role, live sanctions screening, and monitoring wired into your AML workflow. Controlled launch with a pilot customer group and capped limits.
Deliverable: audited live system + examiner-ready audit trailPlus: the third-party security audit, billed as a disclosed pass-through at cost plus a 15% coordination fee. Typical range $60,000–$150,000 depending on scope and firm.
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4
Operate & Transfer
Included in ProductionRunbooks for every scenario, 8–16 hours of training across treasury, compliance, IT, and ops, and a 90-day support window. After that, support moves to a retainer, or to your own team.
Deliverable: runbooks + training + knowledge transferThe test of success: your staff onboards a customer, processes a mint and a redemption, freezes an account, and clears a reconciliation exception without calling us.
A straightforward single-core, single-instrument path to a live system runs roughly $750,000 to $900,000 all-in, including the external audit. After that, you own it.
Rent vs. own
The platform's price goes up when you succeed. Ours doesn't.
Turnkey issuers monetize your reserves, typically keeping around 10% of the yield the float generates. That's a fee that scales with your circulating supply, forever, and leaves you owning nothing. Building costs more on day one and stops costing more after that. Here's where the lines cross. Every assumption is editable; check our math.
Owning pays for itself above ≈ $69M in circulating supply.
Below that, renting is cheaper, and above it, the gap widens every year.
Rent (platform issuer)
Own (ABS)
Five-year cost
$1,350,000
$1,251,000
Setup / build
$150,000
$795,000
Ongoing
$1,200,000in reserve-yield share
$456,000in Steward retainer
You own at year 5
Nothing
Source, tests, docs, runbooks
Cost if float triples
$3,750,000
$1,251,000
Paste-ready for a board deck or email, assumptions included.
Estimates only, for planning discussion. Platform take rates vary by provider and tier; some publish a 90/10 reserve-yield split, others price differently. Build costs depend on your core platform, instrument choice, and institution size. Your Feasibility Sprint replaces these estimates with real numbers.
In every engagement
Ownership isn't an upgrade tier.
Architecture documentation
Written for your team and your examiner, not for us.
The complete test suite
100% coverage with invariant and fuzz testing, handed over with the code.
The audit package
Full report, every finding, every remediation, dated and traceable.
Runbooks
Every operational scenario, including the ones nobody wants to run.
Training
8–16 hours across treasury, compliance, IT, and ops. Live, with your actual system.
Straight answers
What we don't charge you for, because we don't do it.
Legal and regulatory work
Reserve structure, licensing, and the opinion on whether your institution may issue at all belong to your counsel, your compliance team, and your regulators. We build the technical system that supports their work. Be wary of any vendor who prices this as a line item.
The independent security audit
We never self-certify. The audit goes to a reputable third-party firm and we pass the cost through with a 15% coordination fee, shown on the invoice.
Your core vendor's fees
FIS, Fiserv, and Jack Henry may charge for API access, sandbox environments, or integration certification. Those go direct to them. We'll tell you what to expect during the Sprint.
Reserve custody and attestation
Your custodian and your attestation firm bill you directly. We integrate with them.
After the 90 days
Keep us on, or don't.
The 90-day support window is included. What follows is optional, month to month, with 60 days' notice. You own the code either way. This is help, not access.
Business-hours advisory. Contract and dependency monitoring, quarterly patch review, reconciliation exception support, and a monthly operations review.
For institutions whose team has taken the system over and wants a backstop.
Everything in Steward, plus 24/7 on-call coverage for the reserve invariant and pause path, monthly attestation support, and incident response with a defined SLA.
For institutions running live customer volume.
Everything in Operator, plus a named engineer, roadmap and feature work, annual re-audit coordination, and examiner support hours when the exam arrives.
For institutions treating the system as a product line.
Consortia & CUSOs
Build once. Deploy across the membership.
Credit unions and bank groups forming a shared settlement layer don't need N copies of the same build. We build the shared infrastructure once and onboard each institution onto it: governance, per-institution roles, and private channels included. The per-institution cost falls sharply after the first few.
Consortium engagements are priced on the shared build plus a per-institution onboarding fee. The structure depends on the governance model, so we scope these individually.
Talk to us about a consortium →
Straight answers
Pricing questions
Why publish prices at all?
Because you shouldn't have to sit through a discovery call to find out whether this is a $50,000 conversation or a $5,000,000 one. The Sprint price is exact. The build ranges are honest ranges, and your Sprint turns them into a fixed number.
Why is the Sprint $45,000 and not free?
Because the deliverable is real. You leave with a signed-off requirements document, a target architecture, and a costed roadmap that your board can act on, including the decision not to proceed. A free assessment is a sales document. This isn't one.
What makes a build land at the high end of the range?
Institution size, core platform and how cooperative its APIs are, whether you're issuing a stablecoin or a tokenized deposit, the number of counterparty types in scope, and whether you need multi-entity governance from day one. The Sprint tells you exactly where you land and why.
Do you take a percentage of our reserves or transaction volume?
No. Not basis points on float, not per-transaction fees, not revenue share. We'd be taking a permanent position in your money supply, which is precisely the arrangement we exist to replace. We charge fixed fees for engineering and an optional monthly retainer for support.
Can we pay across milestones?
Yes. Build stages are billed against defined milestones with the first tranche at signing. We work with your procurement and AP terms.
What if we stop after the Pilot?
You keep everything: source, tests, documentation, and the dry-run results. There is no clawback and no license to renew. That's what owning means.
Find out what it takes. In three weeks, for a fixed fee.
A Feasibility Sprint gives your board a clear answer: the right instrument, a target architecture, a core-integration assessment, and a costed roadmap. Start there. Scale only when it's earned.
- Sprint fee credits 100% toward the Pilot
- No basis points on your float, ever
- You own everything we build