Tempo blockchain is now open to the public, with Stripe and Paradigm launching a live trial on Tuesday that allows any company to build real-world stablecoin payment apps on the network.
Stripe and Paradigm first announced Tempo in September in partnership with Deutsche Bank, Nubank, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Today, that partner list has expanded a bit more to include UBS, Cross River Bank, and prediction markets platform Kalshi.
Tempo builds a dedicated track for payments
Matt Huang, Paradigm’s co-founder and project lead for Tempo, said the industry still feels tough to navigate for developers. “The crypto ecosystem can be quite intimidating,” Matt said. “We want to close that developer experience gap for people thinking about real-world use cases for stablecoins.”
The project reportedly follows the same model Stripe used as it grew into a $106.7 billion online payments company, which focused on plug-and-play tools for simple integration. Tempo uses that same idea to let platforms accept stablecoin payments without heavy setup, separating payment traffic from the rest of the chain.
Traditional blockchains mix everything (trades, memecoin launches, and payments) into one lane. When congestion hits, gas fees climb, and transactions slow down. Tempo’s system avoids that by isolating payments so trading activity cannot freeze payroll or vendor transfers.
William Gaybrick, Stripe’s president of technology and business, said earlier this year that past memecoin launches caused payroll processors using stablecoin rails to lose the ability to pay workers on time.
“There are design choices around how payments are treated versus how trading volume is treated, so that when you have a memecoin launch, those volumes are protected,” William said.
Tempo charges one-tenth of a cent per payment. Other transactions have different costs, but the fixed-fee payment rail targets businesses that cannot afford card fees.
Debit and credit cards often cost between 1% and 3% of a payment plus a flat fee. Those fees shut out small-value transfers and limit microtransactions, which matter to companies charging tiny amounts many times a day.
Companies offering AI services have pushed for real-time billing so they can charge users at the exact moment compute is consumed. Tempo’s structure supports this payment style.
Stablecoin demand grows but stays tied to trading
Tempo accepts any US dollar-denominated stablecoin for fees, including USDT from Tether and USDC from Circle. Supply could reach $3.7 trillion by 2030 if crypto keeps blending with traditional finance and macro conditions remain favorable, based on estimates from Citigroup.
Analysts also warned that if regulation drags or fraud and security issues stay unresolved, supply could land closer to $500 billion, which still doubles current levels.
Stablecoins remain mostly used for crypto-related activity instead of general business payments. Total stablecoin volume in February reached nearly $4 trillion, compiled from Allium Labs and Visa.
Only $6 billion counted as actual payments, based on data organized by Artemis, Castle Island Ventures, and Dragonfly Capital.
The global stablecoin market cap now stands at $311,853,892,203, with $77,110,374,339 in daily trading volume.
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