Payment Giant Stripe's Dual Strategy: x402 Protocol Initiates the "AI Agent Pay" Era, Tempo Chain Aims for Global Payments

BlockBeats News, February 11th, payment giant Stripe has recently been active in the crypto and AI fields. The most significant progress is the official launch of the x402 protocol support, allowing developers to directly charge AI agents, using the USDC stablecoin for settlement on the Base chain.

It is reported that Stripe has integrated x402 (preview version) through its PaymentIntents API, allowing developers to achieve machine payments with just a few lines of code. It is suitable for scenarios such as API calls, tool usage, web scraping, content access, etc. Human-to-agent transactions are uniformly displayed on the Stripe dashboard, supporting near-zero fees, instant settlement, and no chargebacks. Jeff Weinstein, Product Manager at Stripe, stated that starting with Base + USDC, more protocols, chains, and currencies will be expanded in the future.

Meanwhile, Stripe continues to strengthen its stablecoin infrastructure, incubating Tempo (in partnership with Paradigm) Layer 1 blockchain, focusing on global stablecoin payments, aiming to replace traditional systems like SWIFT. Currently, the Tempo testnet is live, and the mainnet is expected to launch by 2026.

Farcaster co-founders Dan Romero and Varun Srinivasan also announced on February 9-10 that they would lead the team to join Tempo.

Furthermore, Tempo has completed a $500 million Series A financing round, with a valuation of $50 billion. Meanwhile, Stripe, with a valuation of over $140 billion in a recent tender offer, has received high market recognition for its crypto/stablecoin strategy. From supporting USDC, acquiring Bridge, to implementing x402 and absorbing talent from Tempo, Stripe is accelerating its layout for the future of AI agent + on-chain payments.