The fintech giant Stripe along with Tempo, a blockchain startup incubated by the payments company as well as the venture firm Paradigm, launched a new payments protocol on Wednesday to make it easier for AI actors to send and receive money. Dubbed the “Machine Payments Protocol,” the open-source network supports payments in both fiat and cryptocurrency. The protocol is also compatible with Stripe’s existing AI payments infrastructure. On Wednesday, Tempo simultaneously announced that its blockchain went live after operating in a test phase over the past three-and-a-half months.
“Agentic payments is very early, and we still are figuring out the best way to structure these,” Matt Huang, cofounder of Tempo and managing partner at Paradigm, told Fortune. “So our team just came up with what we thought was the most elegant, minimal, efficient protocol that anyone can extend without our permission.” Tempo, which raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation in 2025 from Silicon Valley heavyweights like Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital, has positioned itself to ride this new wave of commerce. The startup’s blockchain is designed for high-speed payments and stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies pegged to real-world assets like the U.S. dollar.
The protocol Tempo designed with Stripe isn’t the only existing framework for agentic payments. Coinbase has also designed its own network, which it dubbed x402, a callback to a message encoded by early internet pioneers that returned a 402, or “Payment Required,” error. And Google released a new payments scheme in September that includes support for credit cards as well as stablecoins. The payments giant Visa also contributed to Stripe and Tempo’s “Machine Payments Protocol,” developing the specifications for letting agents pay with credit or debit cards.
“We look at MPP as another way that you can have a very clear, defined protocol around how an agent communicates with merchants,” Cuy Sheffield, Visa’s head of crypto, told Fortune. Stripe and Tempo announced the Machine Payments Protocol, an open-source network designed to ease sending and receiving money in both fiat and cryptocurrency. The protocol is compatible with Stripe’s existing AI payments infrastructure, and Tempo reported that its blockchain went live after a three-and-a-half-month test phase. Founders described the protocol as an elegant, minimal, and extensible framework that anyone can build upon without permission.
The initiative sits within a broader ecosystem of agentic payments, with Coinbase developing its own network (x402) and Google launching a new payments scheme that supports both cards and stablecoins. Visa contributed to the Stripe-Tempo specifications to enable agents to pay with credit or debit cards. This collaboration signals a move toward clearer, defined protocols governing how AI agents communicate with merchants and facilitate cross-border, cross-asset transactions.
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