Stripe and Tempo Launch Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) — The Open Standard for Autonomous AI Agent Payments
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. ...