Stripe has quietly teamed up with crypto investor Paradigm to build Tempo, a new Layer-1 blockchain aimed at enabling instant, low-cost cross-border payments and bridging traditional finance (TradFi) with decentralized finance (DeFi).
Revealed in a job listing posted August 3 on the Blockchain Association’s career page, Tempo is described as a high-performance, payment-focused L1 that will be open-source and compatible with Ethereum and both TradFi and DeFi platforms. The posting — for a product marketing role — said the project is in stealth mode, will run on its own base network, and will be managed initially by a five-person core team. That job listing has since been removed, and neither Stripe nor Paradigm has publicly commented.
Tempo is positioned to tackle familiar pain points in global payments:
- slow settlement times,
- high fees
- intermittent reliability during peak-volume sessions.
Stripe hopes the network will improve performance and uptime for payment flows, giving the company tighter control over settlement infrastructure — particularly for stablecoins — by integrating Tempo into its existing payments stack.
The move builds on Stripe’s recent expansions in crypto infrastructure. The payments firm, valued at roughly $92 billion, has long offered streamlined online checkout and automated invoicing tools. It acquired Bridge, a stablecoin infrastructure company, for about $1.1 billion to let businesses integrate and issue stablecoins within payment flows, and in June 2025 bought Privy, a wallet developer, to add wallet services for managing customer holdings. Tempo would allow Stripe to internalize settlement rails that process those stablecoins and better marry Web3 rails with mainstream commerce.
Analysts say a dedicated, high-throughput payments chain could help address performance and reliability issues that plague payment institutions during peak periods — but success will depend on real-world throughput, developer adoption, and interoperability with Ethereum and existing banking corridors. For now, Tempo remains in stealth, and the industry is watching for formal details from Stripe and Paradigm.
