Tempo, a payments-focused layer-1 blockchain developed by Stripe and Paradigm, launched its mainnet and introduced the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), an open standard for agentic payments. MPP enables programmatic, autonomous transactions between agents and services, allowing seamless coordination, authorization, and settlement of payments without custom billing flows. The protocol is payment-method agnostic, supporting a range of options including stablecoins, cards, wallets, and Bitcoin Lightning, and is both open and extensible. Early partners like Visa and Lightspark expanded MPP to support card payments and Bitcoin transactions, respectively. Tempo’s introduction of “sessions” enables programmatic, streaming payments with defined limits, facilitating continuous machine-to-machine transactions. The platform released a directory of compatible services from providers such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Tempo aims to address inefficiencies in global payments and remittances, contributing to a broader industry movement towards agentic economies and intelligent, automated financial interactions. This aligns with trends across the blockchain sector, with projects like Ethereum and Coinbase also building capabilities for autonomous, agent-driven payments.