Stripe and Paradigm jointly launched the mainnet of Tempo, a payment public chain, and simultaneously introduced the "AI Machine Payment Protocol".

At the intersection of cryptocurrency payments and artificial intelligence (AI), a heavyweight player has officially entered the scene. Tempo, a blockchain infrastructure jointly incubated by crypto venture capital giant Paradigm and payment services giant Stripe, announced the official launch of its mainnet on March 18, aiming to provide the underlying infrastructure for internet-scale physical payments and the AI ​​machine economy.

Designed specifically for "AI agents": solving the pain points of traditional payments

In their announcement, the Tempo team pointed out that while stablecoins have become a core layer of internet commerce, existing blockchains are not designed for large-scale payment workloads, and transaction fee volatility and throughput limitations remain significant obstacles. In particular, with the rise of "AI agents," these digital agents need to be able to autonomously program and make frequent, small-amount payments for various services (such as purchasing computing power, acquiring data, or calling APIs).

To meet this need, Tempo launched the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), an open standard developed in collaboration with Stripe. MPP allows AI agents to automate payment coordination between services, completing requests, authorizations, and settlements without human intervention.

Unique "Sessions" mechanism: OAuth authorization for funds

Tempo introduces a new primitive called "Sessions," a concept similar to OAuth authorization in the software world. Users only need to authorize once to allow an AI agent to make continuous payments within defined limits. Thousands of micro-transactions can be aggregated into a single on-chain settlement, making true "pay-per-use" feasible at internet scale.

Backed by global giants: Visa, Mastercard, and OpenAI all included.

Tempo's ecosystem has demonstrated remarkable appeal, and it has already established deep partnerships with numerous multinational corporations:

• Payment giants: Visa has expanded its MPP to support card payments on its network; Mastercard, Revolut, and Nubank are also exploring shifting global lending and cross-border remittances to Tempo.
• AI leaders: Model providers such as OpenAI and Anthropic are leveraging this infrastructure to enable AI to autonomously process payment flows.
• Business platforms such as Shopify, DoorDash, and payment tool providers like Ramp are all testing Tempo's embedded finance solution.

Furthermore, Tempo's "Payment Catalog" integrated over 100 services from its initial launch, including developer tools such as Alchemy and Dune Analytics. Developers can now build directly on the Tempo mainnet via public RPC nodes.

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