Stablecoin payment infrastructure for US sponsor bank
USAA U.S. sponsor bank is seeing demand for supporting stablecoins for new programs and supporting such programs is of high commercial relevance for the bank. We ran a six-week discovery to develop the architecture, the MVP scope, build-vs-buy-decisions and the investment case.
The Challenge
Sponsor banks are the licensed layer behind large payment programs. When a program’s customer moves money to make a payment, the bank carries the regulatory accountability to do so in a compliant way.
Stablecoin payments involve new technologies, new parties involved and include actions traditional payments programs do not require at all, such as minting stablecoins, while also providing new properties such as immediate settlement.
At the same time each partner is only reporting on their individual leg, while the bank is responsible for the funds at every step and needs to reconcile against its core banking system at the end of the day.
Our Solution
Impact of our Work
Buy Commodity, Build Edge
Ledgering, custody and screening are commodity capabilities with mature vendors. What the bank must own is the layer that makes it accountable: the view of funds across every participant. We designed the solution to reflect that explicitly.
Exit Rights First
Vendors were selected primarily on the cost of leaving, not only based on the feature list and subscription fee. An unexercised right to exit disciplines pricing, roadmap and renewals permanently and has strategic value.
Certification Follows The Operator
Security attestation attaches to whoever runs the system. On a vendor-operated deployment the bank can inherit required certifications from day one. Choosing open-source solutions under permissive licences where possible keeps both options live: managed now for speed and inherited attestation, self-operated later at a known cost.
Reconciliation By Design
Reconciliation is a property of the architecture, not a process bolted onto it. Where a participant’s report and the actual state of funds diverge, the difference surfaces as an exception in near real time instead of appearing at end of day.
Client Background
A U.S. chartered bank, acting as the licensed banking partner behind major fintech payment programs. Its programs reach consumers at national scale.
