Tempo Head of Product: From First Line of Code to Mainnet in 7 Months

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Mar 23, 2026

Liam Horne, product lead at Tempo who steered Tempo mainnet and MPP work. He dives into the Machine Payments Protocol and how it enables frictionless, high-frequency micropayments. He explains Tempo’s seven-month sprint to mainnet and stablecoin-native features built for enterprise. He highlights creative agentic use cases and the multi-rail future of on-chain payments.

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ADVICE

Make Agent Commerce Payment Agnostic

Do design agentic commerce tools to be payment method, PSP and vault provider agnostic so any agent can pay without being locked into one chain or provider.
Visa built an SDK and Visa CLI to show how MPP card can work across PSPs and enable command line commerce today.

INSIGHT

MPP Removes Checkout Friction For Agents

MPP removes friction where agents would otherwise force a human to open a browser, create accounts, and paste API keys.
Hackathons are building many MPP services so agents can stay in-flow and pay endpoints directly for domains, fonts, images and more.

INSIGHT

Sessions Enable High Frequency Micropayments

Sessions are a tab-like primitive in MPP that lock a small on-chain amount then allow hundreds of instant micropayments off that lock.
This enables per-token billing to LLMs where you pre-lock $5 then pay per token cheaply and instantly.

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On Ep. 75 of Tokenized, Simon Taylor, Head of Market Development @ Tempo and Cuy Sheffield, Head of Crypto @ Visa, are joined by Raj Parekh, Head of Stablecoins and Payments @ Monad and Liam Horne, Product @ Tempo to discuss the Machine Payments Protocol MPP, Tempo mainnet launch, Mastercard acquiring BVNK for $1.8 billion and more!

Timestamps:

00:00 Introduction
2:36 Machine Payments Protocol MPP overview and purpose
4:31 Visa partnership on MPP and command line commerce
9:25 MPP enabling frictionless agentic workflows
14:52 Sessions enable micro payments per token
19:31 Tempo mainnet launch and key features
22:41 Evolution of third generation layer one blockchains
31:16 Creative agentic applications being built on Tempo
36:22 Mastercard acquires BVNK for $1.8 billion
37:28 Financial institutions need a stablecoin strategy

Tokenized is sponsored by Visa

A world leader in digital payments, Visa is bridging the gap between traditional financial institutions and innovative blockchain networks, helping players in the payments ecosystem navigate the ever-evolving world of tokenized fiat currencies with confidence and ease. Learn more at visa.com/crypto.

Tokenized is presented by Bridge, a Stripe company.

Just like the internet made information global, stablecoins are making money global. And Bridge, a Stripe company, is the infrastructure powering that shift. Built for speed, scale, and simplicity, Bridge helps businesses send, store, convert, and spend stablecoins instantly, all without borders or having to navigate the complexities of crypto. Learn more at bridge.xyz

Tokenized is also presented by Fireblocks

With over $100 billion in monthly stablecoin volume, Fireblocks powers stablecoin strategies at scale with infrastructure that enables PSPs, fintechs, remitters and banks to issue, move, hold, and manage stablecoins. And it’s all done securely, at scale, and with built-in compliance. Learn more at fireblocks.com

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We’d also like to remind you that the views or opinions of our contributors today are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the companies they are representing. Nothing we say should be taken as tax, financial, investment or legal advice, do your own research!

Music by Henry McLean