zFINIAMachine Economy Intelligence

Editorial

payment · announced · reported

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

An open standard co-authored by Stripe and Tempo. Agents request a resource, receive a 402-style payment request, authorize, and the merchant can see the payment like any other PaymentIntent.

Problem: Give agents an internet-native way to pay for APIs, MCP servers and HTTP resources, including settlement into existing merchant balances.
How payment or discovery works: Designed to be rail-agnostic, including cards and stablecoins. Tempo’s public mainnet note (18 March 2026) introduced MPP with Stripe. Stripe states support for both MPP and x402 inside a broader agentic commerce stack.
Maintainers: Stripe, Tempo
Networks: Tempo; card networks as described by the maintainers
Evidence of adoption: Official Tempo mainnet announcement and Stripe documentation dated 18 March 2026. Partnership language from card networks is not a volume disclosure.
Last verified by zFinia: 7 September 2026

zFinia covers MPP as a strategically important rail. Announcement is not observed settlement volume.

Official documentation · Primary source · Explainer

Related: x402, visa-intelligent-commerce, acp

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Editorial

TIER_A · official announcement · Public record

Tempo mainnet ships with Stripe-coauthored Machine Payments Protocol

On 18 March 2026 Tempo announced public mainnet RPC and introduced MPP, co-authored with Stripe. MPP lets an agent request a resource, receive a 402 challenge, authorize payment, and receive the resource. Tempo says Visa, Stripe and Lightspark have extended MPP across cards, platform methods and Lightning. Stripe’s own blog presents MPP as an open standard for agent payments, including settlement into existing Stripe balances.

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)tempo

Event 18 March 2026 · source 18 March 2026 · zFinia published 7 September 2026 · retrospective

Editorial

TIER_A · official announcement · Public record

Stripe documents MPP as an internet-native way for agents to pay

Stripe published MPP as an open standard co-authored with Tempo. Agents request an API, MCP server or HTTP resource; the service returns a payment request; the agent authorizes; Stripe businesses see the payment like any other PaymentIntent. Stripe also states payment support for both MPP and x402 inside a broader agentic commerce stack.

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)x402

Event 18 March 2026 · source 18 March 2026 · zFinia published 7 September 2026 · retrospective

Editorial

TIER_B · analysis seed · Public record

Agent wallets converge on stablecoins plus policy limits

Across Visa Intelligent Commerce, x402 and MPP, the shared design is: the human sets a budget and allowed counterparties; the agent spends inside that envelope; settlement is a stable unit or a card token. The protocols disagree on rail, not on the control problem.

Visa Intelligent Commerce x402 Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

Event 18 March 2026 · source 18 March 2026 · zFinia published 7 September 2026 · retrospective

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TIER_A · company move · Public record

Agent commerce protocols proliferate beyond crypto-native stacks

Through 2025–2026, incumbent payments and model vendors published overlapping agent-commerce interfaces. Stripe describes an Agentic Commerce Protocol alongside MPP and x402 support. Visa shipped Intelligent Commerce. The overlapping vocabulary is a classification problem for buyers and a coverage obligation for zFinia.

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)x402 Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)

Event 18 March 2026 · source 18 March 2026 · zFinia published 7 September 2026 · retrospective

Editorial

TIER_A · official announcement · Public record

Mastercard is named as a Tempo/MPP design partner for agent payments

Tempo’s mainnet note lists Mastercard among partners working on mainnet payment use cases, and says MPP is extensible to card networks. This is partnership language, not a settlement-volume disclosure. zFinia files it as TIER_B/A official corporate communication depending on the primary source.

Machine Payments Protocol (MPP)

Event 18 March 2026 · source 18 March 2026 · zFinia published 7 September 2026 · retrospective