INTRODUCING | Global Fintech Giant, Stripe, Launches Tempo, a Payments-Focussed Blockchain for Stablecoins

Stripe and Paradigm’s stablecoin-focused blockchain Tempo has launched its first public testnet, marking a significant milestone in its path toward becoming a full-fledged layer-1 blockchain. The open-source testnet is now live, allowing anyone to ‘run a node or sync the chain’ to experiment with its features.

Tempo’s public testnet currently supports a suite of key features:

• Dedicated payment lanes
• Stablecoin-native gas
• Built-in decentralized exchange for stable assets
• Support for payments and transfers metadata
• Fast deterministic finality, and
• Modern wallet signing methods.

According to Tempo’s developers, the goal is to deliver instant, deterministic settlement, predictably low fees, and a stablecoin-native experience – features that many general-purpose blockchains struggle to offer in the context of financial applications.

“Tempo is built to deliver instant, deterministic settlement, predictably low fees, and a stablecoin-native experience, which are qualities that most general-purpose blockchains still struggle to provide for financial applications,” Tempo said.

An interesting feature highlighted by the CTO of Paradigm was the ability of users to create new stablecoins straight from their browser, part of the ‘Tempo’s superpowers,’ as he put it.

The public testnet comes roughly four months after Tempo was first unveiled, and only a few months after the project raised $500 million in a Series A funding round that valued it at $5 billion. Early ‘design partners’ include major names such as:

• OpenAI
• Deutsche Bank
• Standard Chartered
• Shopify

and new partners like:

• Mastercard
• UBS
• Klarna, and
• Kalshi

among other partners.

In a broader industry context, this move echoes recent developments at SWIFT.

As reported by BitKE in September 2025, SWIFT’s Chief Innovation Officer argued that traditional financial institutions are unlikely to rely solely on public blockchains – instead, banks prefer to ‘own their own rails.’

In his view, public blockchains like Bitcoin or Ethereum can serve as a ‘substrate’ or base layer, but trusted settlement for institutions requires governance, compliance and legal enforceability managed internally, rather than outsourced to third-party infrastructure.

In other words: while public, decentralized networks offer transparency and programmability, institutions are unlikely to ‘live on a competitor’s rails.’ Instead, the next wave in financial infrastructure could see traditional finance – banks, payment providers, fintechs – absorbing the strongest aspects of public blockchains, while building their own trusted, compliant rails.

Tempo’s public testnet – with its stablecoin-first, payments-optimized design – can be seen as one such effort: a new rail built by a payments giant and a crypto-native firm, aiming to bridge real-world finance and blockchain-native value movement.

EDITORIAL | Why Circle, Stripe, and the Next Wave of Fintech Giants Want Their Own Blockchains

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