Visa backs Stripe and Tempo

Visa is moving to embed itself in what could become the next important layer of digital commerce: payments initiated not by people, but by software agents acting on their behalf.

Visa backs Stripe and Tempo

Its support for Stripe and Tempo’s new Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) signals a serious attempt to shape the standards underpinning autonomous transactions before rival frameworks gain scale.

The arrangement centres on enabling card-based payments within MPP, an open protocol designed to let artificial intelligence agents, merchants and payment services coordinate transactions programmatically.

Until now, much of the discussion around machine-to-machine commerce has focused on stablecoins and blockchain-based settlement.

Visa’s intervention broadens that conversation by bringing conventional card rails into the picture, making the proposition more relevant to mainstream merchants and acquirers.

A bid to make autonomous commerce commercially credible

Visa says it will extend MPP across its global network and through the Visa acceptance platform.

In practical terms, that means releasing a card-based specification for the protocol, alongside a software development kit to help developers build agent-driven card transactions.

Merchants will also be able to accept card payments through MPP, while tapping Visa Intelligent Commerce and its Trusted Agent Protocol to strengthen authentication, security and fraud controls.

That emphasis on trust is unsurprising. Autonomous payments may be technologically feasible, but commercial adoption will depend on whether consumers and businesses believe agents can transact safely and within defined limits.

Rubail Birwadker, Visa’s global head of growth products and strategic partnerships, framed the issue squarely around security, privacy and shared standards.

Why this matters for the payments sector

The strategic significance lies in Visa’s attempt to position agentic commerce as an evolution of existing checkout behaviour rather than a radical break from it.

If successful, that could lower barriers to adoption by linking emerging AI-driven payment experiences to familiar card infrastructure.

For Stripe and Tempo, Visa’s involvement adds credibility. For the wider industry, it suggests that machine payments are shifting from theoretical concept to competitive battleground.