Stripe is betting that the next evolution of payments won’t be drive by humans, but by autonomous AI agents transacting on blockchain rails.
Blockchain has become a core component of the financial services infrastructure, underpinning everything from stablecoins to artificial intelligence models—and increasingly serving as the foundation for programmable, always-on commerce.
Stripe has been an avid investor across these areas, including the acquisition of stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge and its expansion into agentic commerce through integrations with buy now, pay later leaders in recent years.
Last year, the payments firm unveiled Tempo, a blockchain effort launched in a collaboration with digital assets firm Paradigm. Tempo was built to facilitate high volumes of payments, and as the blockchain brings its mainnet online, there are reportedly over 100 services integrated.
Stripe highlighted Tempo’s capability to reshape cross-border payouts, payments, and remittances, and the blockchain could even play a role in embedded finance and tokenized deposits. Stablecoins are expected to serve as the workhorses facilitating many of these functions, and Stipe has highlighted its objective to bring “real payment workloads” to digital assets.
Sessions with an Agent
Stablecoins will also likely factor into the operations of the newly launched Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) an open agentic commerce standard designed to provide the infrastructure for AI agents to transact autonomously.
Stripe and OpenAI first unveiled plans for the protocol last year after partnering to bring direct payments to ChatGPT. While the protocol runs on Tempo’s blockchain, MPP was designed to integrate with other payments rails, including digital wallets and cryptocurrencies.
One of the key features of the protocol is that it supports “sessions,” where after funds and instructions are determined upfront, allowing agents to carry out multiple transactions with no further interaction.
Sorting the Shared Language
While the session capability is notable, there are still lingering doubts about consumer and business appetite for agentic commerce. Data from Coinbase’s agentic commerce protocol suggests that most transactions on the platform still consist of pilots and trials.
Still, this hasn’t stopped leading payments firms from developing their own agentic commerce protocols, including platforms from Google, Visa, Klarna, and others. Because these protocols are intended to function as a shared language for agentic commerce, the increasingly fragmented landscape could create challenges for merchants, financial institutions, and consumers seeking to develop cohesive strategies.
