Stripe

The infrastructure for autonomous AI agent commerce just got its first open standard. On March 18, 2026, Tempo — the payments blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm — launched its mainnet alongside the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP): a co-authored open specification with Stripe that enables AI agents to transact independently, without human approval in the loop. This is a landmark moment for agentic AI. Until now, agents that needed to pay for services, buy compute, or execute purchases on your behalf faced a messy patchwork of workarounds — stored credentials, simulated user sessions, or blocking waits for human authorization. MPP is the industry’s first serious attempt at a unified, open standard for agent-to-agent and agent-to-service payments. ...

The agentic commerce infrastructure stack just took a meaningful step forward. Klarna and Stripe today announced that Klarna’s Buy Now, Pay Later options will be supported through Stripe’s Shared Payment Tokens (SPTs) — meaning AI agents can now complete BNPL checkout flows on behalf of users without ever handling raw card details. Affirm also joined the SPT ecosystem on the same day, signaling that this isn’t a one-off integration — it’s the beginning of a standardized payment delegation layer for AI-driven shopping. ...