Tempo, a blockchain startup backed by Stripe and incubated with venture firm Paradigm, has launched a new payments protocol aimed at helping AI agents send and receive money. The system, called the Machine Payments Protocol, is an open-source network that supports both fiat and cryptocurrency payments and is designed to work with Stripe’s existing AI payments infrastructure. According to Fortune, the rollout came alongside the launch of Tempo’s blockchain, which had been operating in test mode for roughly three and a half months.
The company is betting on what the industry has started calling agentic payments, or transactions carried out by autonomous AI systems on behalf of users. Tempo’s blockchain is built for high-speed payments and stablecoins, and the protocol is intended to work across multiple blockchains and payment rails rather than stay limited to Tempo’s own network. “Agentic payments is very early, and we still are figuring out the best way to structure these,” Tempo Co-Founder and Paradigm Managing Partner Matt Huang told Fortune. He said the team aimed to create “the most elegant, minimal, efficient protocol” that others could build on without needing permission.
The launch puts Tempo into a growing field of companies trying to define how AI agents will transact online. Fortune noted that Coinbase has introduced its own framework, called x402, while Google released a payments scheme last year that supports both cards and stablecoins. Visa also contributed to Tempo and Stripe’s protocol by helping develop specifications for agent payments made with credit and debit cards, giving the project backing from both crypto and traditional payments players.
