Stripe’s money management capabilities now support stablecoin transfers on Tempo. Businesses in 100+ countries can hold, send, and receive stablecoins directly from Stripe, settling in under a second. Learn more in the full case study →
Global payouts remain one of the most expensive and unpredictable parts of running an international business. A company paying contractors in 30 countries manages a patchwork of regional payment rails, each with its own settlement timelines, fee structures, and intermediaries that add cost at every hop. For platforms distributing earnings to sellers and creators across dozens of markets, those limitations compound with every payout.
As stablecoin demand grew across Stripe’s customer base, Stripe needed blockchain infrastructure that could match its scale, reliability, and cost requirements for global payments. General-purpose blockchains built for trading and DeFi introduced unpredictable fees, throughput constraints, and operational complexity that didn’t fit Stripe’s payment workloads.
Stripe and Tempo
Tempo now serves as core blockchain infrastructure powering Stripe’s money management capabilities. Millions of businesses can hold, send, and receive stablecoins directly from Stripe. When a business sends a payout to a contractor abroad or a platform distributes earnings to sellers across 100+ countries, the transaction settles in under a second at a fixed cost of $0.001.
But money management is just the starting point. Tempo is being integrated more broadly across Stripe products. Connect payouts, card issuance, and onramp infrastructure all benefit from the same settlement properties. Through Stripe’s partnership with Visa, recipients can spend directly from stablecoin balances at merchant locations worldwide. The full loop works on a single stack: collect revenue through Stripe, hold stablecoins, pay out globally on Tempo, and let recipients spend via card.
“It should be easy and instant to move money anywhere in the world. That’s the promise of programmable financial services. As we bring stablecoin infrastructure into more Stripe products, we’re delivering on that promise at scale, so every Stripe user can benefit from faster, cheaper, borderless money movement.” — Neetika Bansal, Head of Connect and Money Management at Stripe
What Stripe needs from a settlement layer
Moving money at Stripe’s scale puts specific demands on the infrastructure underneath. Millions of businesses sending payouts across 100+ countries need a settlement layer that is fast, predictable, and operationally invisible.
Dedicated payment lanes guarantee blockspace for payment transactions at the protocol level, so throughput is never affected by other network activity. For infrastructure supporting millions of businesses, that reliability is a prerequisite.
Gas abstraction means the entire money management experience operates in dollars. Fees are denominated in stablecoins rather than a volatile native token, keeping operational budgets predictable and accounting simple.
Native memo fields compatible with ISO 20022 let each transfer carry structured metadata: invoice numbers, cost centers, payout identifiers. For businesses reconciling thousands of payouts against ERP and treasury management systems, this makes reconciliation straightforward.
Fixed fees per transaction eliminate the cost uncertainty of traditional correspondent banking, regardless of volume.
What this means
Stripe’s approach positions Tempo as invisible infrastructure underneath the products millions of businesses already use. A business on Stripe does not need to know their payout settled on Tempo. They see a faster, cheaper transfer in their dashboard.
For the broader market, the largest payment processor in the world running production infrastructure on Tempo signals where stablecoin settlement is heading. The question for enterprise payment teams is no longer whether stablecoins will play a role in global money movement, but which settlement layer to build on.
