Stripe Partners with Tempo to Launch Machine Payment Protocol MPP, AI Agent Autonomous Payment Infrastructure in Place

Author: Tempo / Liam Horne

Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

Deep Tide Introduction: Tempo’s mainnet is now live, and simultaneously, the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP), drafted jointly by Stripe, has been released—this is not a single crypto project building an ecosystem alone. Visa, Anthropic, OpenAI, Mastercard, and Shopify have all integrated this open standard.

The core innovation of MPP is the “session” mechanism, similar to OAuth in the payment space: an Agent grants one-time authorization and pre-deposits funds, then each API call or data consumption is automatically settled in real-time without needing to record each transaction on-chain.

If this protocol becomes a standard, autonomous consumption by AI Agents will shift from concept to scalable reality.

Full text below:

Tempo Mainnet Officially Launches!

Tempo is an internet-level infrastructure designed for real-world payments. Its goals are: instant settlement, predictable low fees, high throughput, and global availability. Starting today, you can begin building on Tempo via our public RPC endpoints.

Get Started →

Along with the mainnet launch, we also released the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP)—an open standard for machine payments drafted by Stripe and Tempo. See below for details.

When we first announced Tempo in September, the premise was simple: if stablecoins become the core layer of internet commerce, then the infrastructure for transferring funds must be built specifically for payments.

Stablecoins enable cross-border instant settlement and 24/7 availability. However, most existing blockchains are not designed for large-scale payment workloads. Fluctuating fees, limited throughput, and transaction structures that don’t suit common payment flows.

Unlike other blockchains, Tempo is designed around the needs of real payment systems: predictable costs, high throughput, and reliable settlement for large volumes of transactions.

Over the past few months, a new class of applications has made these needs clearer:

Rise of Agent Payments

Agents can now write code, coordinate services, retrieve data, and execute complex workflows across the internet. As these systems grow more capable, they increasingly need to make transactions.

A research-oriented Agent might need to pay for access to a dataset. A developer Agent might need to buy computing power or test infrastructure. A workflow Agent might need to coordinate multiple services, paying each as tasks complete.

In these scenarios, payments become continuous and programmable. A single workflow could involve dozens or hundreds of small payments for different services, rather than a single transaction between two parties.

This pattern quickly exposes the limitations of existing payment infrastructure.

Traditional payment systems assume transactions are initiated by humans and go through manual approval processes. Many existing blockchains are not designed for high-frequency, low-value transactions—where predictable costs and reliability are critical.

Tempo provides a settlement infrastructure for such scale interactions, enabling Agents to transact programmatically.

Release of the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP)

To lay these foundations, we are releasing the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP)—an open standard for machine payments. MPP is designed to be scalable and agnostic to payment methods, currently supporting stablecoins, bank cards, and more.

MPP offers a standardized, programmable payment coordination method for Agents and services. Each service no longer needs to invent its own billing process; MPP defines a simple protocol for initiating, authorizing, and settling payments between machines.

We chose to publish MPP as an open standard to ensure machine payments can remain consistent across services and payment channels.

While currently running on Tempo, the protocol itself is designed to be agnostic and scalable across underlying layers. For example, our partner Visa has extended MPP to support bank card payments on its network. Stripe has integrated it to support bank cards, wallets, and other payment methods through its platform. Lightspark has extended it to support Bitcoin payments over the Lightning network.

Streaming Payments and the Session Mechanism

MPP enables Agents to autonomously pay for services: they send resource requests, services respond with payment requests, and Agents authorize payments from their wallets. Transactions are settled instantly, and services deliver the requested resources immediately.

This mechanism is implemented via a new primitive called “session,” which supports continuous payments. Think of it as OAuth for payments: authorize once, then allow automatic payments within set limits.

When an Agent opens a session, it pre-locks funds. As the Agent consumes resources (API calls, model inferences, data queries, etc.), payments flow continuously without needing to initiate on-chain transactions for each interaction.

Thousands of small payments can be aggregated into a single settlement transaction, making pay-as-you-go models feasible at internet scale.

Payment Directory

Our payment directory provides a unified catalog of MPP-compatible services, allowing any Agent to automatically transact with listed services.

Service providers can also connect to this directory, enabling monetization of their services and discoverability by Agents. MPP supports various scenarios, including API call-based billing, monetized MCP servers, paid content and data, and multi-service workflows.

At launch, the directory includes integrations with over 100 services, covering model providers, developer infrastructure, compute platforms, and data services, including Alchemy, Dune Analytics, Merit Systems, and Parallel Web Systems.

Infrastructure for Scaled Payments

Although Agents represent a new business paradigm emerging on Tempo, our infrastructure also supports traditional payment scenarios, including global payroll, cross-border remittances, embedded finance, and tokenized deposits—scenarios that remain surprisingly difficult to build and operate.

Since the public testnet launched last December, we’ve been working with partners in payments, commerce, and finance to migrate real payment workloads onto stablecoins:

Global Payroll: Platforms that pay employees, sellers, and creators in bulk, often handling millions of transactions. These systems require predictable costs and reliable throughput. Tempo’s dedicated payment channels enable instant settlement for large-scale payroll operations, unaffected by congestion or fee fluctuations.

Cross-Border Remittances: Current international transfers often involve multiple intermediaries, taking days to settle. Partners are testing remittance channels on Tempo for instant, real-time settlement with full auditability and predictable costs.

Embedded Finance: Software companies increasingly embed payment flows directly into their products. Tempo’s smart accounts and protocol-level notes allow developers to integrate financial workflows directly into their products without building separate ledger infrastructure.

Tokenized Deposits: Financial institutions are exploring tokenized representations of deposits and other assets to enable continuous settlement beyond traditional banking hours. Tempo provides reconciliation primitives and compliance registries aligned with traditional financial controls, supporting real-time settlement.

We are collaborating with partners like Anthropic, DoorDash, Mastercard, Nubank, OpenAI, Ramp, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, and Visa to bring these scenarios onto the mainnet. We will also introduce more features tailored for enterprise payment workloads and share updates in the coming months.

Start Building on Tempo

Today, Tempo mainnet is live.

Developers building Agents can now use MPP to enable Agents to pay for services. Fund Agent wallets, set spending limits, and allow Agents to transact autonomously across the internet.

Developers creating global payment systems can leverage Tempo’s infrastructure for high-throughput settlement, cross-border transfers, and embedded financial workflows.

You can get started by:

Creating a wallet on Tempo and initiating your first transaction

Exploring the Machine Payment Protocol documentation and SDK

Monetizing your API through the payment directory and making it discoverable to Agents

Building directly on Tempo via the public RPC endpoints