Written by: KarenZ, Foresight News
Fintech giant Stripe is accelerating its布局 in the stablecoin and payment fields.
A now-removed job posting revealed its secret collaboration with cryptocurrency venture capital firm Paradigm — the two are jointly building a high-performance payment-specific blockchain called Tempo.
This move is a key step in Stripe's continued布局 in the stablecoin sector, reflecting its ambition to reshape the global payment system and even the financial landscape.
Tempo: A payment-focused Layer 1 blockchain
According to a recently archived product marketing recruitment post (now removed) on the Blockchain Association website by Fortune magazine and cryptocurrency lobbying groups, Tempo is positioned as a "high-performance, payment-focused blockchain (Layer 1)" and is currently in a confidential phase. The team currently consists of 5 members and is recruiting its first product marketer.
The position requires candidates to be familiar with fintech/payments or cryptocurrency, and to have "marketing experience targeting the (Fortune) 500," indicating that the target customer group is large enterprises.
According to a report by Fortune magazine citing four informed sources, Tempo is a Layer 1 blockchain that uses a programming language compatible with Ethereum.
This technical choice ensures independence while leveraging the mature developer resources of the Ethereum ecosystem to lower application barriers.
Notably, Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang is both a member of the Stripe board and was an early investor in the crypto wallet company Privy, which Stripe acquired. Paradigm led a $18 million Series A funding round for Privy in November 2023, during which Matt Huang also joined Privy's board. In March 2025, Privy announced the completion of a $15 million funding round led by Ribbit Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Paradigm, and Coinbase. This deep binding laid the foundation for collaboration between Paradigm and Stripe.
In fact, in February this year, Matt Huang stated that Paradigm is discussing with some of the world's largest companies to help them formulate stablecoin strategies, such as faster global expansion or easier fund custody.
From acquisition and collaboration to self-development: Stripe's advanced layout in stablecoins
The development of Tempo is a continuation of Stripe's stablecoin strategy. From acquiring infrastructure to developing underlying technology, its layout logic is clear and progressively advancing.
Step 1: Establish the core infrastructure for stablecoins — Bridge
In October 2024, Stripe acquired stablecoin infrastructure company Bridge for $1.1 billion, marking its largest acquisition to date.
Bridge allows businesses and developers to seamlessly integrate stablecoin payments and supports convenient transfers between fiat and stablecoins.
Bridge has attracted numerous clients, including SpaceX. For example, SpaceX uses Bridge to repatriate sales funds from Starlink in Argentina, Nigeria, and other markets. The new Mexican bank DollarApp uses Bridge to help individuals receive dollar payments from payroll service providers like Deel. Artim uses Bridge to pay employees across Latin America.
As Stripe co-founder John Collison stated at Stripe Sessions 2025 this May, "Stablecoins can truly achieve borderless finance. By comparing the payment transaction growth of the first two years of Stripe's establishment with that of Bridge, we can see that Bridge shows a more significant exponential growth trend, which also indirectly confirms the tremendous potential of stablecoins."
Step 2: Connect offline payment scenarios and launch stablecoin financial accounts
In addition, on April 30, Stripe's Bridge partnered with Visa to launch a stablecoin card issuance product, allowing developers using Bridge to programmatically issue Visa cards related to stablecoins in multiple countries/regions through a single API integration.
Businesses and individuals can use their stablecoin balance for everyday shopping anywhere Visa is accepted. When cardholders shop, Bridge deducts funds from their stablecoin balance and converts it to fiat currency, while merchants continue to receive payments in local currency.
After acquiring Bridge, Stripe officially announced the launch of stablecoin financial accounts on May 8, aiming to provide global enterprises with more efficient and convenient cross-border payment and fund management solutions.
According to Stripe's official documentation, stablecoin financial accounts allow users to hold USDC and USDB stablecoin balances and send and receive funds through stablecoins and traditional financial channels (such as ACH, SEPA, and wire transfers), meaning that funds from the stablecoin balance can be transferred to external bank accounts or crypto wallets. If the recipient is an external bank account, the received amount will be automatically converted based on the current exchange rate, greatly enhancing the convenience and flexibility of fund transfers. This service's technical support also comes from the Bridge platform acquired by Stripe.
Step 3: Fill in the user entry point — Privy
In June 2025, Stripe also incorporated embedded crypto wallet developer Privy under its wing.
Privy's authentication and wallet infrastructure allows developers, project parties, or companies to register wallets for users, initiate self-custody wallets, and securely sign transactions through applications. Privy simplifies the use of cryptocurrency by embedding wallets in the application.
At the core, Privy combines trusted execution environments (TEE) with distributed key sharding to provide a seamless, secure, and scalable wallet.
In June this year, data released by Privy showed that Privy has over 75 million accounts in more than 180 countries/regions, with a monthly transaction volume exceeding 85 million, totaling over 500 million RPC calls. Privy's clients include mainstream crypto projects such as Hyperliquid, Farcaster, Jupiter, Zora, pump.fun, and Blackbird.
Step 4: Self-develop underlying blockchain — Closed loop of Tempo
The development of Tempo is an important piece of the puzzle in Stripe's stablecoin strategy.
Through the self-developed Layer 1 blockchain, Stripe is able to control the core processing of stablecoin transactions, forming a complete closed loop with previous layouts: Bridge focuses on stablecoin infrastructure construction and corporate integration, responsible for corporate stablecoin integration and issuance; Privy provides user wallet access; stablecoin financial accounts connect with Visa cards for fund transfer scenarios; and Tempo handles the underlying transaction processing.
Stripe's ultimate goal is to fully control the entire process of stablecoin payments through the Tempo blockchain.
Stripe's deep ambitions
Stripe's vast customer network provides a natural landing scenario for its stablecoin ecosystem.
According to Stripe CEO Patrick Collison and co-founder John Collison's 2024 annual letter released in February this year, in 2024, the total amount of enterprise payments on the Stripe platform reached $14 trillion, a year-on-year increase of 38%, equivalent to 1.3% of global GDP. Stripe firmly believes that technologies such as stablecoins and artificial intelligence will inevitably reshape the economic landscape. The Stripe ecosystem covers every dimension of the economic map, from industry giants (half of the Fortune 100 are using Stripe), to fast-growing companies (80% of the Forbes Cloud Computing 100 and 78% of the Forbes AI 50 are Stripe's clients), to emerging startups (one in every six newly registered Delaware companies completes registration through Stripe Atlas).
Stripe has previously stated that it is becoming the preferred platform for building stablecoin applications and is already in discussions with several top global companies to assist them in formulating stablecoin strategies, such as accelerating global expansion or simplifying fund custody.
If Stripe's stablecoin ecosystem fully takes shape, it could become a key hub for the integration of Web2 and Web3 finance, further consolidating its position in the trillion-dollar payment empire.
Stripe's ambitions go beyond improving payment efficiency. In its 2024 annual letter, it mentioned that stablecoins could become an "upgraded version of the Eurodollar" — just as the Eurodollar system provides offshore dollar services for non-US companies, stablecoins enable global dollar circulation with lower barriers. Furthermore, stablecoin issuers could also become significant buyers of US Treasury bonds, further bolstering the dollar's strong position.
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