Tempo
Tempo Technical Briefing
Published April 14, 2026
Supported by Brale , The Stable Coin Company and Refract Ventures
Overview
Tempo's Brendan Ryan introduces the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), designed with Stripe as the payment form for AI agents. The briefing shows how MPP rides natively on HTTP request/response flows so agents can make paid API calls without preconfigured API keys or billing relationships, with live demos paying Parallel for web data and unlocking a payment-gated article via HTTP 402 — across Tempo, Stripe, Solana, Bitcoin payment methods, and Visa cards from day one.
0:00 Launching the Machine Payments Protocol
Tempo's Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), designed with Stripe, positioned as the payment form for agents in the broader stablecoin and agentic-commerce wave.
0:52 Why payments matter for AI workflows
Stablecoins improve cross-border, payroll, and netting efficiency. AI creates value that needs to be captured, but the classic payment form is full of friction and fights 20+ years of bot-protection headwinds.
1:46 Designing the payment form for agents
First-principles redesign: MPP works natively in the HTTP request/response flow. An agent can make a paid API call with no API key and no formal billing relationship — the 402 response carries the payment terms.
2:40 Paying Parallel for web data on demand
Live demo calling Parallel's LLM-search and web-scraping API in cents per request using a Tempo wallet, with no API key provisioned in advance, to retrieve structured data on the fly.
3:56 10+ payment methods on day one
MPP ships with support for Tempo, Stripe, Solana, Bitcoin payment methods, and Visa cards via a spec extension — multi-method and multi-interface by design rather than protocol-specific.
4:48 HTTP 402 and payment-gated articles
Classic paywall UX rebuilt on MPP: load a page, receive a 402 with price and accepted methods, confirm payment with a vaulted Stripe card (or Tempo, or any stablecoin), and the page returns 200 — same programmatic flow across rails.
Presented by Brendan Ryan — Tempo · website
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