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

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

Author: Tempo / Liam Horne

Translation: Deep潮 TechFlow

Deep潮 Guide: Tempo has launched its mainnet and simultaneously released the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP)—a collaborative open standard drafted with Stripe. This isn’t 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 authorizes once, pre-funds, and then each API call or data consumption is automatically settled in real-time without individual on-chain transactions.

If this protocol becomes a standard, AI Agents’ “autonomous consumption” will move from a concept to a scalable reality.

Full Text:

Tempo Mainnet Officially Launches!

Tempo is an internet-scale 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 endpoint.

Get Started →

Alongside the mainnet launch, we also released the Machine Payment Protocol (MPP)—a collaborative open standard drafted by Stripe and Tempo. Details below.

When we first released 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. But 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. But as these systems grow more capable, they increasingly need to make transactions.

A research agent might need to pay for access to a dataset. A developer agent might need to purchase compute 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 to 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. 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 this foundation, 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 way for agents and services to coordinate payments. Each service doesn’t need to invent its own billing process; MPP defines a simple protocol for initiating, authorizing, and settling payments between machines.

We are releasing MPP as an open standard to ensure consistency across services and payment channels.

While currently running on Tempo, the protocol itself is designed to be agnostic and extensible. For example, our partner Visa has extended MPP to support bank card payments on its network. Stripe has extended it to support bank cards, wallets, and other payment methods via 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 resources immediately.

This is achieved through 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), payments flow continuously without needing on-chain transactions for each interaction.

Thousands of small payments can be aggregated into a single settlement, 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 join the directory to monetize their services and make themselves discoverable to 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, including model providers, developer infrastructure, compute platforms, and data services like 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 at scale, 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, without building separate ledger infrastructure.

Tokenized Deposits: Financial institutions are exploring tokenized representations of deposits and other assets for continuous settlement beyond traditional banking hours. Tempo offers 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’s mainnet is live.

Developers building agents can start using 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 via the payment directory and making it accessible to agents
• Building directly on Tempo’s public RPC endpoint