ARQ is scaling cross-border payments on Tempo across Latin America
ARQ, a financial services platform serving over 2 million customers across Latin America, is building its cross-border payment infrastructure on Tempo for faster settlement, lower costs, and a foundation for its expanding product suite.
Scaling cross-border payments across four countries
ARQ is a financial services platform serving over 2 million customers across Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, and Brazil. From a single app, users hold and move digital dollars and euros, invest in international markets, and spend worldwide. The platform processes more than $10 billion in annualized transaction volume, all built on stablecoin infrastructure that users never have to think about.
Stablecoins have powered ARQ's cross-border payment engine from the start, letting users move money between countries in seconds rather than days. But as the platform expands beyond payments into investing, credit, and everyday spending, the demands on the settlement layer grow. Each new product vertical adds complexity. Transaction volume compounds. And the cost, speed, and reliability of the infrastructure underneath directly affects what ARQ can offer its customers and at what margin.
At $10 billion in annualized volume and growing, the settlement layer is not a background concern. It is a strategic decision that shapes product speed, unit economics, and the ability to expand into new markets and use cases.
What ARQ is building on Tempo
ARQ is moving its cross-border payment infrastructure onto Tempo, bringing the settlement layer for its core products onto a chain purpose-built for high-volume stablecoin payments.
For ARQ, this means settlement costs governed by Tempo's fixed $0.001 fees rather than variable infrastructure pricing. It means sub-second deterministic finality, so every transaction settles with the certainty that users and regulators expect. And it means built-in tooling for compliance, reconciliation, and payment operations that would otherwise require custom engineering at ARQ's scale.
The shift is invisible to ARQ's customers. They still hold digital dollars, move euros, and spend worldwide from the same app. What changes is the infrastructure underneath: faster, cheaper, and designed for the kind of high-throughput stablecoin settlement that ARQ's growth demands.
Why ARQ chose Tempo
When ARQ evaluated infrastructure partners, the decision came down to a specific set of requirements: low, predictable transaction costs without managing gas token balances; instant settlement finality; built-in compliance and reconciliation tooling; a payments-focused ecosystem; and a clear product roadmap toward capabilities ARQ needs as it scales, including on-chain FX and privacy.
Tempo's architecture matched that profile. Gas abstraction lets ARQ pay fees in any USD-denominated stablecoin, so the entire operation stays denominated in dollars with no volatile token to manage. 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 that ARQ's transaction throughput is never affected by other network activity.
Beyond the infrastructure, alignment mattered.
“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.”
What started as a dollar-access product for Latin American consumers is becoming a full financial services platform for cross-border commerce and personal finance across the Americas. The infrastructure underneath needs to match that ambition.
What's ahead
Tempo gives ARQ a foundation that scales with the product roadmap. In the near term, it means faster settlement, lower costs, and a more seamless experience for the 2 million customers who already use ARQ daily.
Over time, building on Tempo opens a path to capabilities that matter as the platform grows: native on-chain FX between stablecoins, direct merchant settlement, programmable payment flows, and privacy features for enterprise use cases. For ARQ's customers across the Americas, the result is a financial platform where the infrastructure underneath keeps pace with the product on top.
If you're a fintech or financial services company exploring stablecoin settlement infrastructure, get in touch.
