By Carlos Netto, CEO/Co-Founder, Matera
Executive Summary
Stablecoins are entering the financial mainstream. The U.S. dollar stablecoin market could surpass $2 trillion by 2028 according to the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, a staggering figure that underscores how quickly digital dollars are moving into the mainstream. At the same time, there are over 10,000 digital currencies being tracked by CoinMarketCap, a leading global platform that tracks prices, trading data for cryptocurrencies. Even though not every digital asset will gain widespread adoption, it’s clear that consumers increasingly expect banks and credit unions to help them safely navigate a growing array of digital assets.
With regulatory frameworks like the GENIUS Act gaining bipartisan momentum, the window is narrowing for financial institutions to act. The opportunity is real, and so is the risk. If stablecoin adoption accelerates outside the traditional financial system, banks and credit unions may lose both deposits and direct customer relationships. This article dives deeper into the tactical options banks and credit unions have to embed a stablecoin into their mobile app.
Embedding Stablecoin in mobile apps
To recap, financial institutions can offer USDC embedded directly within their mobile apps. Using a high performance ledger that can support 24X7 authorization as well as 6+ decimal point currencies in partnership with a regulated stablecoin provider like Circle, banks and credit unions can support stablecoin and crypto balances and display real-time, accurate balances to users without modifying their legacy Core.
Core banking platforms not built to support digital assets
Traditional Core banking platforms, while essential for many banking functions, were never designed to handle the unique technical demands of stablecoins and tokenized currencies.
Digital assets move instantly, around the clock, across global networks. Customers expect to see an accurate, up-to-the-second view of their stablecoin and crypto balances, just as they would expect with their checking account. They also want the ability to seamlessly convert between stablecoins like USDC and their local fiat currency, all within the same trusted banking interface.
This level of real-time transparency and precision presents challenges for traditional Core systems. Most Cores are designed for batch processing cycles and end-of-day reconciliation, making it difficult to support 24x7 authorization, instant settlement, and high-frequency balance updates across large numbers of individual wallets. Further, stablecoins don’t map easily to the account-based structures of the Core. Instead, they operate on the principle of wallets where balances are often highly fractional, recorded at six or more decimal places, and capable of moving fluidly between parties.
High performance ledger in partnership with regulated stablecoin issuer
To meet these demands, financial institutions can introduce a dedicated digital asset ledger that runs alongside the Core. This ledger operates as a real-time transaction engine, authorizing transfers, updating balances instantly, and managing high-precision holdings across both stablecoin and crypto assets. The Core system remains fully responsible for managing traditional account operations, while the digital asset layer manages the unique demands of stablecoin activity.
This model also allows financial institutions to avoid the operational burden of standing up and managing individual blockchain wallets for every customer. Instead, the financial institution’s aggregate holdings of USDC are securely custodied by a regulated partner like Circle. Circle holds the institution’s total stablecoin position directly on the blockchain. Sitting between this external pool of blockchain-based assets and the bank or credit union’s customers is the digital asset ledger. It acts as a granular sub-ledger that tracks how much of the financial institution’s total USDC holdings belong to each individual customer at any given moment.
This architecture allows financial institutions to scale digital asset offerings efficiently, providing full customer-level visibility, accurate real-time balances, and seamless fiat-stablecoin conversions, all while retaining KYC and AML oversight within the bank or credit union’s regulated environment. From the customer’s perspective, stablecoin balances are fully integrated into their existing mobile and online banking experience, with no need to open external wallets or manage crypto-native keys.
Platforms like Matera’s Digital Twin, in combination with Circle’s USDC, make this model operational today. Digital Twin delivers the real-time transaction processing, sub-ledgering, and high-precision balance management needed to support stablecoin activity at scale, while Circle provides the fully reserved, regulated digital dollars that sit at the center of this new financial architecture. Together, they allow financial institutions to bring stablecoin capabilities directly into their existing customer relationships, without requiring costly or disruptive Core system overhauls.
Real-Life Use Cases for Stablecoin Adoption
Once financial institutions embed stablecoin within their mobile apps, they unlock a wide range of new financial services, starting with high-impact applications like cross-border payments. Consider this example:
A customer at a U.S. bank wants to send money to a friend in Germany. In a typical scenario, they might go through SWIFT, pay a $45 fee, and wait 2-3 business days. With stablecoin embedded in a bank mobile app:
- The customer logs into their mobile banking app
- Converts $1,000 USD to USDC instantly
- Sends it to the friend’s crypto wallet in Germany
- The recipient sees USDC in their wallet and converts to EUR
- The whole process completes in seconds
In this example, the bank retains the customer and holds the original deposit as long as possible. The customer also gets the benefit of speed and efficiency.
Beyond cross-border payments, stablecoin adoption opens a broad range of potential applications for banks and credit unions.
Commercial clients could use stablecoins for merchant settlement, invoicing, and treasury management, allowing businesses to collect payments instantly and optimize working capital across fiat and digital currencies. Stablecoins can also serve as a hedge against local currency volatility in certain emerging markets.
Financial institutions can offer on-ramp and off-ramp services that allow customers to convert between fiat and stablecoins directly inside the bank or credit union’s own app, eliminating the need for customers to engage with external crypto exchanges while keeping all activity within the financial institutions’ mobile app.
In the future, banks and credit unions may introduce digital asset savings products, including tokenized money markets and yield-bearing stablecoin accounts, provided appropriate regulatory frameworks are established.
Person-to-person transfers could also benefit, as stablecoins enable instant value transfer between customers at different institutions, without relying on traditional ACH or debit networks. The same real-time capabilities can be extended to corporate disbursements and payroll processing, allowing gig workers, contractors, and cross-border employees to be paid instantly in stablecoin.
Finally, for smaller banks and credit unions who are not yet fully integrated into real-time settlement networks like FedNow, stablecoins may serve as an alternative settlement layer, enabling near-instant payments even when both parties are not on the same domestic clearing rail.
Closing Thoughts: An Invitation to Reimagine Banking
Stablecoins offer an opportunity to strengthen customer relationships, protect deposits, and deliver new digital financial services — all without replacing Core systems.
By combining the regulated liquidity of Circle’s USDC with the real-time transaction capabilities of a high performance ledger built for digital assets like Matera’s Digital Twin, banks and credit unions can confidently enter the stablecoin era, remaining at the center of the financial value chain for years to come.