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Polymarket US operates as a CFTC-regulated Designated Contract Market (DCM) and Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO). As a partner you integrate against a single platform — the internal split between matching and clearing is ours to manage, not something your integration needs to model.
Audience: developers and solution architects. A conceptual model of the platform and the entities your integration acts on.

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One platform, two functions

FunctionWhat it doesWhat you interact with
DCM (matching)Maintains the order book, matches orders, publishes market dataOrder entry, market data
DCO (clearing)Holds collateral, clears trades, settles contractsBalances, positions, funding transfers
In every diagram and API in these docs, the platform is represented as a single actor: Polymarket US. You authenticate once and use one set of credentials regardless of whether a given call is served by the matching or clearing function.

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The entity model

Your integration acts on a small, consistent set of entities:
EntityWhat it isWhen it’s created
FirmYour IB/ISV organization — the permissions container you authenticate asAt partner onboarding
Retail ParticipantA person you onboard who trades through your platformAutomatically, when their KYC is approved
AccountThe trading account holding a Retail Participant’s balances and positionsAutomatically, alongside the Retail Participant
You authenticate as the Firm and act on behalf of the Retail Participants beneath it. You collect each participant’s KYC information and submit it; Polymarket US performs the verification and decision. On approval, identity and accounts are provisioned automatically — there is no separate “create user” or “create account” call.
In these partner docs, Participant means a trading identity — a person you onboard. Be aware the main glossary also uses the word “participant” in an unrelated market-structure sense; the Partner Glossary explains the distinction.

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How messages flow

A typical action — placing an order on behalf of a Retail Participant — looks like this from the outside: Your application is the bridge: you translate participant actions into authenticated requests, and translate Polymarket US streams back into your UI.

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Identifying who you act for

API calls that are scoped to a participant carry an x-participant-id header identifying which Retail Participant the action is for. You can discover the identities available to your Firm at any time: See Accounts & Identity for the identity hierarchy, or Onboard Participants for how identities are created and listed.

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Next steps

Integration Journey

The recommended order to build your integration.

Authentication

Authenticate as your Firm with Private Key JWT.