Author: KarenZ, Foresight News
Financial technology giant Stripe is accelerating its layout in the stablecoin and payment fields.
A now-removed job posting revealed its secret collaboration with crypto venture capital firm Paradigm — both parties are jointly building a high-performance payment-specific blockchain called Tempo.
This move is a key step in Stripe's ongoing layout in the stablecoin track, reflecting its ambition to reshape the global payment system and even the financial landscape.
Tempo: A Layer 1 blockchain focused on payments
According to a recently published product marketing job posting archive (now removed) on the websites of Fortune magazine and the cryptocurrency lobbying group Blockchain Association, 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 people and is recruiting its first product marketer.
The position requires applicants to be familiar with the fintech/payment or cryptocurrency field, and to have 'marketing experience targeting Fortune 500 companies', indicating that its target customer base is large enterprises.
According to four informed sources cited by Fortune magazine, Tempo is a Layer 1 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.
It is worth noting that Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang is both a member of Stripe's board and was involved in early investments in the crypto wallet company Privy, which Stripe acquired. In November 2023, Paradigm led a $18 million Series A funding round for Privy, 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 was 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, cooperation to self-development: Stripe's stablecoin layout advancement
The development of Tempo is a continuation of Stripe's stablecoin strategy. From acquiring infrastructure to self-developed underlying technology, its layout logic is clear and progressive.
Step 1: Secure the core stablecoin infrastructure — 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 the convenient transfer of fiat currency and stablecoins.
Bridge has attracted numerous clients, including SpaceX. For instance, 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 in May this year, 'Stablecoins can truly enable borderless finance. Comparing the payment transaction growth of Stripe in its first two years with that of Bridge in its first two years, we can see that Bridge shows a more significant exponential growth trend, which also indirectly confirms the immense potential of stablecoins.'
Step 2: Integrate offline payment scenarios and launch stablecoin financial accounts
In addition, on April 30, Stripe's Bridge also partnered with Visa to launch a stablecoin issuance product, allowing developers using Bridge to programmatically issue Visa cards related to stablecoins across multiple countries/regions through a single API integration.
Businesses and individuals can use their stablecoin balances for everyday shopping anywhere Visa is accepted. When cardholders shop, Bridge deducts funds from their stablecoin balance and converts them 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 can be transferred from the stablecoin balance 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 flow. The technical support for this service also comes from Stripe's acquired Bridge platform.
Step 3: Complete user-side entry — Privy
In June 2025, Stripe further acquired embedded crypto wallet developer Privy.
Privy's identity verification and wallet infrastructure allow developers, project parties, or companies to register wallets for users, initiate self-custody wallets, and securely sign transactions through application security. Privy simplifies the use of cryptocurrency by embedding wallets into applications.
At the underlying level, Privy combines Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) with distributed key sharding to provide a seamless, secure, and scalable wallet.
In June of this year, data released by Privy showed that Privy has over 75 million accounts across 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-developed underlying blockchain — Tempo closed loop
The development of Tempo is now an important piece of the puzzle in Stripe's stablecoin layout.
Through self-developed Layer 1 blockchain, Stripe is able to control the core processing aspects of stablecoin transactions, forming a complete closed loop with previous layouts: Bridge focuses on stablecoin infrastructure construction and enterprise integration, responsible for corporate stablecoin integration and issuance; Privy provides user wallet access; stablecoin financial accounts connect with Visa cards for fund flow scenarios; and Tempo handles 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 in their 2024 annual letter released in February this year, in 2024, the total amount of enterprise payments on the Stripe platform reached $14 trillion, a 38% increase year-on-year, equivalent to 1.3% of global GDP. Stripe firmly believes that technologies such as stablecoins and artificial intelligence will reshape the economic landscape. The Stripe ecosystem covers every dimension of the economic landscape, from industry giants (half of the Fortune 100 are using Stripe) to high-growth companies (80% of the Forbes Cloud 100 and 78% of the Forbes AI 50 are Stripe customers) to emerging startups (one in every six newly registered Delaware companies is registered through Stripe Atlas).
Stripe has previously stated that it is becoming the preferred platform for building stablecoin applications and is already in dialogue 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 may become a key hub for the integration of Web2 and Web3 finance, further consolidating its trillion-dollar payment empire.
Stripe's ambitions go beyond just 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 to non-U.S. companies, stablecoins allow for global dollar circulation at a lower threshold. Additionally, stablecoin issuers may become significant buyers of U.S. Treasury bonds, further enhancing the dollar's strong position.
