The Stripe-backed Tempo blockchain has landed a pair of heavyweight validators in Visa (V) and Zodia Custody, the cryptocurrency custodian majority owned by Standard Chartered (STAN).
Along with Stripe, Visa and Zodia will participate in the Tempo blockchain by maintaining network security and verifying transactions.
Visa, a long-time collaborator with the payments services provider, configured and managed the validator node completely in-house, following six months of working closely 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 a few other blockchains following the Tempo integration. The card network had previously said it would join the Canton Network, where there are plans to serve as a “Super Validator.”
For the past seven years, Visa blockchain engineers have been “living and breathing stablecoins,” said Visa crypto team head Cuy Sheffield. The focus is now on supporting the evolution of new payment flows, such as machine-to-machine commerce using artificial intelligence agents, he added.
“We have been an early design partner, working very closely with the Tempo team, looking to design infrastructure that can support many types of new payment flows, and particularly agent payment flows,” Sheffield said in an interview with CoinDesk.
Tempo, which is also backed by cryptocurrency investment firm Paradigm, last month launched the Automated Payments Protocol (MPP), a protocol that allows software and AI agents to pay for services autonomously.
“Visa is an important part of the MPP,” Sheffield said. “We added the MPP card specification. We announced 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’s no doubting Stripe’s conviction when it comes to setting up an end-to-end blockchain-based system for stablecoin payments. But taking a step back, some people might wonder how open and decentralized such a system is.
Sheffield, in response, said Visa is simply being pragmatic and looking for products that can boost 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 main value proposition. It is about whether a new payment infrastructure is fast, efficient, programmable and can outperform some existing payment infrastructure for certain use cases.”
Stripe entered the stablecoin industry when it acquired stablecoin specialist Bridge for $1.1 billion in 2024. Earlier this year, Mastercard made a similar move, purchasing stablecoin company BVNK for $1.8 billion.
When asked if Visa had plans to offer its own stablecoin, Sheffield said:
“It’s very 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 many different roles that Visa can play, but everything we do, we want to make sure we do it in partnership with our customers and our network.”
UPDATE (April 14, 14:16 UTC): Rewrite the headline, first paragraph to include a reference to Zodia Custody.
