Tempo Goes Live on Mainnet, Unveils Machine Payments Protocol with Stripe

Payments-focused blockchain Tempo, developed by Stripe and Paradigm, announced the launch of its mainnet today, March 18. Also today, Stripe and Tempo revealed a new open standard for AI agent payments, Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), per a separate X post. Today's mainnet launch opens public RPC endpoints to developers. The headline addition is the MPP, an open, rail-agnostic standard for autonomous agent-to-service payments. MPP introduces a "sessions" primitive that lets agents authorize a spending limit upfront and stream micropayments continuously without an on-chain transaction per interaction. Stripe, Visa, and Lightspark have already extended MPP to support cards, wallets, and Bitcoin Lightning payments respectively. A payments directory launching alongside mainnet lists over 100 compatible services. To continue reading this as well as other DeFi and Web3 news, visit us at thedefiant.io