Stripe CEO Patrick Collison said Stablecoins is gaining adoption because they offer faster, cheaper and more reliable payments than traditional systems.
His remarks appeared in a hacker’s news thread on September 5th, 2025, the day after Stripes and Paradigm launched Tempo, a blockchain designed specifically for Stablecoin payments.
In his first comment on Tempo’s announcement thread, Collison wrote that Stripe was “disappointed with Crypto’s payment utility for the majority of the past decade.” He said the company’s view has changed as more companies began using Stablecoins for regular financial activities.
Collison pointed out Bridge, the Stablecoin Infrastructure Provider Stripe, which was acquired in October 2024. He manages money in a market that is hard to reach with SpaceX using it, Fintech Dolarapp in Latin America relies on banking services, and Argentine bike importers use suppliers using Stripe’s dashboard.
“These businesses don’t use cryptography for either crypto or speculative profits,” writes Collison. “They are doing real-world financial activities and we found Crypto (via Stablecoins) to be easier, faster and better than they are.”
When asked if people would ultimately “pay at the tempo,” Collison said the blockchain was meant to work behind the scenes. He compares it to financial messaging systems such as Swift and ACH, noting that consumers may not interact directly with Tempo, but may benefit from its efficiency. He called “a rapidity of a distributed internet scale” an incomplete but useful analogy.
In answering another question (about why businesses find crypto payments attractive), Collison outlined five reasons why businesses are stable.
He also rejected the idea that recruitment was primarily a regulatory ruling. Collison said that Stablecoins are now explicitly regulated in the US in Europe under the Genius Act and MICA, and that their appeal lies in resolving the friction of the massive amount of money movement.
In its announcement on Thursday, Tempo was expressed as a “payment first” blockchain built from scratch for zero coin, combining stripe’s global payment experience with paradigm cryptographic research. The company said as Stablecoins moved to mainstream use, it launched its network to provide infrastructure tailored to real-world payment needs.
Tempo’s design highlights predictable low rates, optional privacy, and the ability to pay both trade and gas costs with Stablecoin. This includes dedicated payment lanes with features like notes and access lists, and is EVM compatible running on the RETH client. Stripe and Paradigm said the blockchain is designed to handle over 100,000 transactions per second with a 1-second sub-second finality.
The network is intended to support global payments and payroll, remittances, round-the-clock, embedded financial accounts, microtransactions, and what businesses call “agent payments.”
Stripes and paradigms also emphasized governance. They said Tempo will work as a neutral platform for Stablecoins, protected by an independent, diverse set of validators, using a roadmap for fully permitted validation.
The project started with a wide roster of design partners including Visa, Standard Chartered, Deutsche Bank, Nubank, Revolut, Shopify, Openai, Anthropic, Coupang, Doordash, Lead Bank, and Mercury.
