METACO partners with Brink’s to strengthen institutional digital asset custody capabilities

By Joy Dumasia

METACO, the leading provider of security-critical software and infrastructure to the digital asset ecosystem, has announced a partnership with Brink’s, the global leader in total cash management, route-based secure logistics and payment solutions. 

Brink’s extends METACO’s institutional digital asset custody services into the physical world through its internationally recognized secure logistics expertise and global network of vault locations. These capabilities provide financial institutions with an unparalleled, segregated, fully distributed disaster recovery solution for critical private key recovery backups. 

METACO Harmonize, the global leader with Tier 1 financial institutions for digital asset custody and orchestration, ensures that all processes across a clients’ digital asset offering are fully distributed with no single point of failure. Key recovery is no exception, and Harmonize clients can create multiple back-ups, each of which is stored on its own FIPS 140-2 Level 3 certified smart card. A client-specified “m of n” subset of the smart cards can be used to recover the crypto assets in a disaster. 

It has always been an open question from financial institutions to determine what are the best practices to store the smart cards and how to implement the right disaster recovery framework. This partnership resolves this uncertainty and brings together the only custody platform that ensures “no single point of failure” in the software and infrastructure stack, with a physical back-up solution that is end-to-end secure and fully distributed to equally ensure no physical and operational “single point of failure” for key recovery storage and logistics. 

Seamus Donoghue, VP of Strategic Alliances at METACO, commented: “We’re proud to further strengthen our industry-leading digital asset custody capabilities to ensure clients have a complete and best-in-class disaster recovery solution. ‘Security by design’ is our founding principle as we, and our clients, believe all assets will eventually be managed on-chain. 

Donoghue added: “A robust recovery solution is not an afterthought, but a core foundation to be able to securely build and scale a bank’s digital asset future. Brink’s is a market leader in physical security solutions, and our partnership adds a critical service for institutional clients in the transport and distributed storage of physical key backups across multiple secure vaults, complementing METACO’s value proposition of no single point of failure into the physical realm of key recovery.”

Founded in 1859, Brink’s is a global leader in security solutions, including the management, storage and transfer of valuable assets for banks, government agencies, central banks, mints and jewellers. Brink’s has an established global network of facilities and operations in 53 countries, with customers in more than 100 countries. Brink’s is growing its digital asset security services in response to accelerating demand. 

 Oliver Buckle-Wright, Senior Commercial Director at Brink’s, commented: “We are delighted to be partnering with METACO to help enable the transition from digital to physically segregated storage solutions across our international footprint. Our goal is to provide a combined secure air-gapped service to allow METACO’s clients to scale their digital asset portfolio while addressing internal risk concerns.” 

METACO Harmonize enables institutions to manage a range of end-to-end digital asset use cases, from cryptocurrency custody and trading to tokenization, smart contract management, and decentralized finance (DeFi). Harmonize delivers the most flexible and secure custody solution in the market in combination with the secure orchestration of workflows across the entire digital stack. It provides end-to-end unified governance across multiple systems and processes and a programmable policy engine that secures automation at scale, with no single points of failure.