As financial institutions modernize their payment and account-processing capabilities, one question comes up repeatedly: How do we support real-time, high-availability transaction processing without replacing the core?
Matera’s Digital Twin is a high performance authorization engine designed for exactly that challenge. Below are the most common questions business and technology leaders ask — and the answers that illustrate why Digital Twin is far more than a simple balance tracker.
What exactly does an authorization engine do?
An authorization engine approves or denies debit and credit transactions in real time, updates balances immediately, enforces limits, and provides full visibility into account activity.
Rather than acting as a lightweight “balance sheet,” an authorization engine functions as a parallel transaction-processing platform that integrates with existing systems without requiring major migrations.
How does an authorization engine work with my existing core banking system?
It operates alongside your current core. It does not replace it.
An authorization engine connects to your existing core and downstream systems through a flexible integration layer, ensuring real-time processing can be introduced without disrupting your current environment.
Because Digital Twin works across multiple cores, currencies, and market requirements, it becomes a single transaction channel capable of feeding all real-time payment rails.
What kinds of transactions can an authorization engine approve or deny?
It can authorize transactions for any account type. Every transaction is evaluated against a comprehensive set of rules - for example, a few may be related to:
- Available balance
- Pending transactions
- Limits (daily, per-transaction, or custom)
- Account status
The system enforces these constraints in milliseconds, ensuring that payments clear (or fail) cleanly with full auditability.
How are complex operations like transfers or batch postings handled?
Not all transactions are simple debits or credits. Many require coordinated operations across multiple accounts.
Modern authorization engines can execute multi-step, multi-account operations atomically — meaning all steps succeed or none do. If any part of a transfer or batch posting fails, the system reverses the entire operation.
This ensures data integrity for even the most complex workflows, something traditional ledger add-ons simply can’t do.
Why are financial institutions adopting Digital Twin now?
Because real-time payments and digital money services demand a system that is…
- Always on
- Exceptionally reliable
- Fast
- Transparent
- Flexible
- Able to coexist with legacy cores
…without a multi-year core transformation. It delivers the functionality required for instant payments, stablecoins, digital wallets, and new customer experiences — all while protecting the stability of the existing core.