The Stripe-backed Tempo blockchain gained a pair of heavyweight validators in Visa ( V ) and Zodia Custody, the crypto depository majority owned by Standard Chartered ( STAN ).
Alongside Stripe, Visa and Zodia will participate in the Tempo blockchain by maintaining network security and verifying transactions.
Visa, a longtime partner of the payment service provider, configured and managed the validator node entirely in-house after six months of joint work with Tempo’s engineering team to integrate the card giant’s infrastructure directly into the blockchain, according to a press release.
Visa plans to run nodes on some other blockchains after the Tempo integration. The card network had previously said it will join the Canton Network, where it plans to act as a “Super Validator.”
For the past seven years or so, Visa’s blockchain engineers have “lived and breathed stablecoins,” said the head of Visa’s crypto team, Cuy Sheffield. Now the focus is on supporting the development of new payment streams such as machine-to-machine trading using AI agents, he added.
“We’ve been an early design partner, working very closely with the Tempo team, looking at designing infrastructure that can support many types of new payment flows, and especially agency payment flows,” Sheffield said in an interview with CoinDesk.
Tempo, which is also backed by crypto investment firm Paradigm, went live last month with the Machine Payments Protocol (MPP), a protocol that lets software and AI agents pay for services autonomously.
“Visa is a big part of MPP,” Sheffield said. “We added the MPP card specification. We announced the Visa CLI, which is a wallet built on top of MPP where agents can use a Visa card to be able to spend. So we’ve been deeply involved in Tempo and the MPP ecosystem, and now we’re running the underlying infrastructure on Tempo.”
There is no doubting Stripe’s conviction when it comes to assembling an end-to-end blockchain-based system for stablecoin payments. But taking a step back, some people might question how open and decentralized such a system is.
In response, Sheffield said Visa is simply being pragmatic and looking for products that can drive payment volume.
“Our view has always been that decentralization is a spectrum,” Sheffield said. “There are many use cases where decentralization for the sake of decentralization does not solve a problem. I think we are now entering a phase in the crypto industry where decentralization is not the primary value prop. It is about whether a new payment infrastructure is fast, efficient, programmable and can outperform some existing payment infrastructure for certain use cases.”
Stripe moved into the stablecoin industry when it acquired stablecoin specialist Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024. Earlier this year, Mastercard made a similar move, buying stablecoin firm BVNK for $1.8 billion.
Asked if Visa had any plans to offer its own stablecoin, Sheffield said:
“It’s so early and the rules haven’t even been fully written yet. We spent a lot of time with the OCC (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) and others,” he said. “I think there are a lot of different roles that Visa can play, but everything that we do, we want to make sure that we do it in partnership with our customers and our network.”
UPDATE (April 14, 14:16 UTC): Rewrites title, first paragraph to include reference to Zodia Custody.
