Payments giant Stripe and crypto investment firm Paradigm have launched Tempo, a new Layer-1 blockchain designed to facilitate high-volume stablecoin transactions and real-world payments. This initiative, announced in September 2025, follows the enactment of the GENIUS Act on July 18, 2025, which established a regulatory framework for stablecoins in the United States.
Tempo is engineered with a payments-first architecture, aiming to process over 100,000 transactions per second with sub-second finality. This capability is intended to support a wide range of use cases, including global payments, remittances, microtransactions, and AI-driven payments. A key feature of Tempo is its flexibility, allowing transaction fees and gas payments to be made in any stablecoin through an integrated automated market maker (AMM), enhancing user and business experience. The blockchain is also EVM compatible, facilitating integration with existing Ethereum tools and developer ecosystems.
The development of Tempo has involved collaboration from major companies such as Anthropic, Coupang, Deutsche Bank, DoorDash, Lead Bank, Mercury, Nubank, OpenAI, Revolut, Shopify, Standard Chartered, and Visa. This broad coalition underscores a collective effort to build a novel payment solution leveraging stablecoin stability and efficiency. The timing of Tempo's launch aligns with the GENIUS Act, which mandates that stablecoins be fully backed by high-quality liquid assets and requires monthly public disclosures of reserve compositions. This legislation is seen as a critical step towards legitimizing stablecoins and fostering their mainstream adoption.
Tempo's introduction represents a strategic move by Stripe to enhance its payment infrastructure, potentially challenging established players. By operating its own blockchain, Stripe gains greater oversight over transaction settlement, fees, and network performance, reducing reliance on external networks prone to congestion and unpredictable costs. The project, currently in a private testnet phase and led by Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang, aims to serve as a bridge for enterprises transitioning into blockchain-based financial services, offering a more efficient and cost-effective alternative to traditional payment rails.