Executive Summary
Utila has partnered with Matera to help banks add digital asset services without undertaking a core banking transformation. Matera’s Digital Twin provides the real-time authorization and ledger layer for customer and bank-level digital asset balances, while Utila provides the wallet infrastructure, key management, policies, and onchain transaction execution. Together, the platforms can support stablecoin deposits and withdrawals, transfers, treasury operations, and movement between traditional deposits and digital assets within existing banking channels.
Banks Need More Than Blockchain Connectivity
As stablecoins and other digital assets become more integrated into financial services, banks are evaluating how to let customers hold, send, and receive them through their existing banking relationships. Doing that requires the bank to preserve the controls, accounting, and customer experience expected from a regulated financial institution.
The difficulty appears when those new services meet the bank’s existing infrastructure. Core banking systems were not designed to manage digital asset balances, wallets, or real-time blockchain transactions. Adding those capabilities through the core itself can therefore require a much broader core transformation.
Banks need another way to connect digital asset activity with customer accounts and the systems they already operate. That includes maintaining customer-level balances, applying bank-defined authorization rules, reconciling treasury positions, and linking digital asset activity with traditional deposit accounts, while blockchain transactions are executed separately onchain. This is the specific infrastructure gap Matera and Utila are addressing together.
What Is Matera?
Matera provides banking technology for financial institutions, with products spanning real-time payments, core banking, and digital currency infrastructure. Its Digital Twin is a high-performance authorization engine and transaction ledger designed to operate alongside a bank’s existing core.
For digital asset use cases, Digital Twin can maintain customer balances and the bank’s corresponding treasury position outside the blockchain while authorizing transactions in real time. It is deployed in the bank’s cloud environment and connects back to the existing core rather than requiring the bank to replace it.
That banking layer provides the connection between customer accounts and the blockchain infrastructure responsible for moving the underlying assets.
Connecting Banking Infrastructure With Onchain Execution
The Matera and Utila partnership connects those two parts of the operating model.
Matera’s Digital Twin maintains customer-level digital asset positions, the bank’s treasury position, and the ledger entries associated with digital asset activity. Utila manages the wallets, cryptographic keys, transaction policies, and blockchain execution required when assets move onchain.
Consider a customer converting funds held in a traditional deposit account into USDC. Digital Twin can coordinate the corresponding account and ledger entries, while Utila handles the blockchain transaction. The customer can hold the digital asset balance with the bank and later send USDC to an external wallet. The process can also work in reverse, with incoming stablecoins credited to the customer’s digital asset account and subsequently converted back into traditional deposit funds.
Banks can apply their own authorization rules before transactions are executed, reconcile customer and treasury positions, and incorporate digital asset functionality into existing digital banking channels. The core continues supporting the bank’s established banking operations while Matera and Utila provide the infrastructure required around digital assets.
Who Benefits From the Combined Infrastructure?
The partnership is designed for banks and other financial institutions that want to introduce digital asset products without making core replacement a prerequisite.
Banks launching customer stablecoin services can support deposits, withdrawals, transfers, and fiat-to-digital-asset conversion while maintaining customer balances within a banking-grade ledger.
Digital banking and product teams can incorporate digital asset functionality into existing customer channels rather than building a separate operating environment around the product.
Treasury and operations teams gain infrastructure for tracking the bank’s own digital asset position alongside customer activity, while Utila provides the controls governing wallets and onchain transactions.
For customers, the result is a digital asset experience delivered through their existing banking relationship, with the bank maintaining control over the account and transaction framework behind it.
Add Digital Asset Services Alongside Your Existing Core
Banks evaluating stablecoins and digital assets do not need to make core replacement the starting point.
With Matera providing the ledger and authorization layer and Utila providing secure digital asset operations and onchain execution, financial institutions can build customer-facing digital asset products around the banking infrastructure they already operate.
Speak with the Utila team to explore how the Matera and Utila architecture can support digital asset services at your institution.
Utila - Digital Asset Infrastructure
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