ARQ serves over 2 million customers across Latin America with dollar and euro accounts, investing, and cross-border payments, processing more than $10 billion in annualized transaction volume. Now ARQ is moving its settlement infrastructure onto Tempo. Learn more in the full case study →
Stablecoins already power the infrastructure behind ARQ’s cross-border payment engine. More than 2 million customers across Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil use the platform to hold and move dollars and euros, invest in international markets, and spend worldwide. ARQ processes more than $10 billion in annualized transaction volume, all settled on stablecoin infrastructure that users never see.
As ARQ expands into investing, credit, and everyday spending, the demands on the settlement layer grow. Transaction volume compounds, each new product adds complexity, and the cost and reliability of the infrastructure underneath directly shapes what ARQ can build next. At this scale, the settlement layer is a strategic decision.
ARQ and Tempo
ARQ is moving its cross-border payment infrastructure onto Tempo, bringing settlement for its core products onto a chain purpose-built for high-volume stablecoin payments. Sub-second deterministic finality means every transaction settles with the certainty that users and regulators expect. And built-in compliance and reconciliation tooling replaces custom engineering.
The shift is invisible to ARQ’s customers. What changes is the infrastructure underneath: faster, cheaper, and designed for the throughput ARQ’s growth demands.
From day one, Tempo understood what we were building, moved with urgency, and offered the infrastructure, product vision, and long-term alignment we needed to scale ARQ.
— Zach Garman, Co-founder and CPO, ARQ
Why Tempo
Tempo is purpose-built for institutional payments. For a platform processing $10 billion a year in stablecoin-settled transactions, several capabilities made the difference.
Gas abstraction lets ARQ pay transaction fees in any USD-denominated stablecoin rather than a volatile native token, keeping the entire operation denominated in dollars. Protocol-level compliance controls, including allowlists, blocklists, and freeze-and-pause capabilities, are built directly into the chain. Native memo fields compatible with ISO 20022 make reconciliation against existing systems straightforward. And dedicated payment lanes guarantee throughput regardless of other network activity.
Tempo’s product roadmap also aligns with where ARQ is headed: on-chain FX, privacy features, and native settlement capabilities that will matter as the platform scales across more markets and product lines.
What this means
For a fintech already processing $10 billion a year on stablecoin infrastructure, building on Tempo is not an experiment. It is the next step in ensuring the settlement layer keeps pace with product ambition.
Over time, the same infrastructure opens a path to native on-chain FX, direct merchant settlement, and programmable payment flows as ARQ’s product suite grows. For the 2 million customers who already use ARQ across the Americas, the result is a platform where the infrastructure underneath is as modern as the product on top.
