Article
6 min read time
Executive Summary
Utila has been selected as the wallet infrastructure provider for Australian Payments Plus (AP+) in Project Acacia - a landmark initiative led by the Reserve Bank of Australia exploring how digital money and tokenised assets can function within the Australian economy.
We will be working alongside AP+, Australia's real-time payments infrastructure operator, Hashgraph, which develops the underlying technology for Hedera and HashSphere, and Hgraph, which provides the interoperability layer for the project.
This selection reflects the capabilities of our infrastructure: MPC-secured wallets that eliminate single points of failure, a granular policy engine that enforces compliance programmatically, and APIs that enable rapid integration across complex institutional environments.
For a project involving real money pilots, high transaction volumes, and central bank oversight, these capabilities are of utmost importance - and Utila is proud to provide the technological stack matching the scope and scale of the challenge.
A Different Approach to Digital Asset Regulation
Digital assets have gained significant traction with the investment world, but their relationship with governments and regulators has historically been more complicated. Many jurisdictions started with stringent regulations, effectively limiting innovation and restricting the use of digital assets for purposes other than trading and investments. The result: limited progress on using tokenisation and digital money for real economic activity.
Australia is taking a different approach. Rather than regulating first and innovating later, Project Acacia runs real money pilots to prove what works in production. The stakes are high by design. Of the 24 use cases selected, 19 involve actual transactions across fixed income, private markets, trade receivables, and carbon credits. Participating organisations must meet rigorous risk, compliance, and regulatory requirements, in addition to technical ones.
The project, led by the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Digital Finance Cooperative Research Centre (DFCRC), is backed by ASIC, APRA, and the Australian Treasury. The DFCRC is structured to deliver commercial outcomes, and participants - ranging from major banks to fintechs - are motivated to demonstrate results that contribute to the Australian economy. Findings from these pilots will inform future regulatory approaches to digital assets.
High-Stake Demands, Proven Participants
Delivering on this vision requires infrastructure providers who can operate at the intersection of security, compliance, and scale. Three organisations are working together on the Australian Payments Plus use cases.
Australian Payments Plus (AP+) operates the New Payments Platform - Australia's real-time payments infrastructure that processed 1.6 billion transactions in 2024. AP+ is running three use cases focused on how digital money can integrate with existing payment systems and settle tokenised assets.
Hashgraph is behind HashSphere, a private, permissioned network developed using Hedera technology that supports compliance and interoperability between private and public networks. HashSphere is designed for regulated institutions to build and scale blockchain solutions, including stablecoins, digital assets, and tokenized financial products.
Hgraph built the bridging and interoperability layer. Their infrastructure enables regulated stablecoins and deposit tokens to move between networks while maintaining auditability.
Utila provides the institutional wallet infrastructure. Our platform secures the digital assets involved in these pilots and enforces the policy controls required for compliant, high-volume settlement operations.
Together, this stack addresses the core challenges: moving digital money across networks (Hashgraph), processing it through national payments infrastructure (AP+), and securing it with institutional-grade controls throughout (Utila).
What's Being Tested
AP+ is running three use cases that represent core challenges in bringing digital money into mainstream financial infrastructure. Each tests a different aspect of how tokenised value can move through the economy - and each requires secure wallet infrastructure to function.
Token Interchange (Atomic Swaps): This use case demonstrates how different forms of digital money - stablecoins issued by one bank, deposit tokens issued by another - can be atomically swapped at scale. Participating institutions need secure, non-custodial infrastructure to handle the interchange. Where required, wholesale CBDC serves as the settlement asset between these different token types.
Payment Infrastructure for Tokenised Real-World Assets (DvP): This use case explores how payments infrastructure supports settlement of digital money for tokenised real-world assets - carbon credits, real estate, securities. AP+ focuses on the payment side of Delivery Versus Payment mechanisms, coordinating settlement between parties across different chains. This requires wallet infrastructure capable of managing the movement and synchronisation of high-value payments tied to institutional assets.
Integration with Retail Payments Infrastructure (NPP): This use case examines how stablecoins and deposit tokens can integrate with Australia's existing retail payments infrastructure. The goal: understand how digital money can flow into and out of traditional bank accounts. As stablecoin adoption accelerates, this integration will determine whether digital money becomes a parallel system or part of mainstream payments.
As stated before, the stakes involved in this project are high. Real money is moving, and regulatory bodies expect commercial outcomes. That creates specific infrastructure requirements.
How Utila’s Infrastructure Addresses the Security Challenge
When multiple institutions are handling digital assets at high volume, each handoff becomes a potential point of failure. Furthermore, manual approval process introduces delay and error and any of the integration points involved could potentially expand the attack surface.
For these reasons alone, the question any institution participating in pilots like this must ask is: how do you maintain rigorous security and compliance controls while operating at the speed and volume these use cases demand?
The answer to this question is an infrastructure that can secure high-value digital assets while enabling the speed and flexibility that institutional settlement requires. And this is exactly what Utila provides. Here's how our platform addresses the core security demands of this project:
MPC Wallet Architecture: Our multi-party computation approach distributes key management across multiple parties. No single server, employee, or process can unilaterally move assets. For atomic swaps between institutional counterparties, for DVP settlement of high-value tokenised assets, for stablecoin flows into retail payment rails - this architecture ensures that security scales with transaction volume.
Granular Policy Engine: Each of the AP+ use cases involves settlement flows between multiple parties, asset types, and networks. Our policy engine lets institutions define precise rules: who can initiate transactions, under what conditions, what thresholds require additional authorization, which asset movements need multi-party approval. These controls execute programmatically, enforcing compliance at speed without manual bottlenecks.
Rapid Integration: Project Acacia operates on a defined timeline with multiple participants, networks, and systems. Our APIs enabled integration with the project's hybrid environment - connecting institutional participants, coordinating with Hgraph's interoperability layer, and supporting the technical requirements of each use case without introducing security gaps.
This combination - security that scales, compliance that executes automatically, integration that maintains integrity - is what institutional digital asset operations require. Project Acacia validates that our infrastructure delivers it.
Infrastructure for High-Stakes Operations
Project Acacia demonstrates that Utila's infrastructure meets the requirements for state-level initiatives: real money transactions, central bank oversight, rigorous compliance standards, and the throughput demands of a national payments operator.
The same platform securing these pilots is available to institutions building stablecoin treasury operations, tokenised asset settlement, and high-volume digital asset infrastructure. Whether you're a financial institution exploring digital money, an enterprise preparing for tokenised assets, or a government body evaluating infrastructure providers - we're prepared to handle projects at this scale.
Get in touch to discuss how Utila's wallet infrastructure can support your settlement, treasury, or tokenization operations.
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