Matera & Utila partner to help banks offer digital assets

Matera and Utila have partnered to help banks offer digital asset services to customers. The tie-up combines Matera's Digital Twin with Utila's digital asset infrastructure.

The arrangement targets banks that want to add services for stablecoins and other digital assets without replacing their core banking systems. It places a separate authorisation and ledger layer alongside existing banking infrastructure, while Utila's platform handles blockchain transactions.

Banks have been exploring ways to let customers hold, send and receive digital assets as stablecoins take on a larger role in payments and settlement. That has created a technical challenge for lenders whose legacy core systems were not designed to manage wallets, customer digital asset balances or blockchain activity in real time.

Under the partnership, Matera's Digital Twin maintains customer-level balances and bank treasury positions for digital asset activity, while Utila manages wallets, private keys, policies and transaction execution across blockchain networks. The architecture keeps customer digital asset accounts off-chain while allowing transactions to be carried out on-chain.

The combined setup can support customer transfers of digital assets, stablecoin deposits and withdrawals, treasury activity, and conversion between fiat deposits and digital assets. It is also designed to let banks apply their own transaction controls and authorisation rules before executing a transfer.

A typical use case would involve a bank customer moving money from a traditional deposit account into a stablecoin such as USDC, holding that balance with the bank, and then sending it to an external blockchain wallet. In the reverse flow, stablecoins received by the bank would be credited to a customer's digital asset account and later converted back into funds held in a conventional deposit account.

Matera said its Digital Twin is deployed in a bank's cloud environment and works alongside the lender's existing core system. In practice, it records the ledger entries tied to movements between fiat money and stablecoins while Utila processes the related blockchain transaction.

The partnership reflects a broader distinction banks face when entering digital assets. Blockchain networks can transfer tokens between wallets, but regulated financial institutions still need systems to track individual customer balances, reconcile treasury positions, enforce internal policies and connect digital asset activity to ordinary deposit accounts.

Matera and Utila are positioning their products around that divide, with Matera providing the banking ledger and authorisation layer and Utila handling custody operations and transaction execution. They argue this approach gives lenders a route into digital assets without the cost and disruption of rebuilding core systems.

Matera focuses on banking technology for real-time financial services and describes Digital Twin as an authorisation engine and ledger that sits alongside a bank's core platform. Utila, which provides digital asset infrastructure for financial firms and corporates, said it serves more than 300 organisations, processes more than USD $25 billion in monthly volume and has secured more than USD $200 billion in transactions.

Carlos Netto, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Matera, outlined the rationale for the agreement.

"Banks shouldn't have to replace their core banking system to participate in the next generation of money. By combining Matera's real-time authorization and ledger capabilities with Utila's digital asset infrastructure, we're giving banks a practical path to offer digital assets using technology that can operate alongside the systems they already have," Netto said.

Banks offering digital assets must account for wallet management, key security, transaction controls and internal policy enforcement, as well as the customer-facing product. That is particularly important as institutions seek to present digital asset services through familiar banking channels rather than separate specialist platforms.

Bentzi Rabi, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Utila, said the operational demands of banking require more than simple blockchain connectivity.

"A bank offering digital assets to its customers has to answer for every wallet, every key, every transaction, and every policy applied along the way. Utila was built for that level of accountability, and Matera brings the ledger and authorization layer that ties it into how banks actually run. It's a foundation financial institutions can build real products on," Rabi said.