How Tempo works
- No volatile gas token: fees are paid in supported dollar stablecoins, with sub-cent standard transfers
- Near-instant settlement with no re-orgs, and payments features such as memos built into the protocol
- EVM-compatible, so Solidity contracts and tools like Foundry work
- A permissioned validator set of payments companies, with a path to open validation but no date
- Tempo Zones, launched October 2026, for private balances and payments with compliance controls
Open USD and adoption
Open USD, issued by Bridge, launched on Tempo on September 30, 2026 with more than $400 million in liquidity and free minting and burning through Coinbase, Stripe and Visa. Stablecoins on Tempo jumped to roughly $700 million by mid-October, with OUSD the majority. Stripe offers OUSD to its businesses and lets them fund Stripe Treasury accounts from Tempo wallets.
Validators include Stripe, Visa, Zodia and MoneyGram, and zerohash joined in October 2026. Anchorage Digital added custody for assets on Tempo the same month.
Machine payments
Tempo launched the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) with Stripe alongside mainnet: an open standard for AI agents and services to request and settle payments. Visa extended it to cards and Lightspark to Bitcoin's Lightning network. It sits next to Coinbase's x402 in the race for agent payments.
Funding
Fortune reported that Tempo raised a $500 million Series A in October 2025 at a $5 billion valuation. Tempo is a separate company, Tempo Labs, and Stripe is private, so there is no direct way to invest; see how to invest in stablecoins. Its main rivals are Circle's Arc and Plasma.
