Mesh and Tempo Formalize Partnership to Advance Stablecoin Payments at Scale

Strengthened collaboration brings Tempo's purpose-built payment infrastructure into the Mesh
ecosystem and establishes a foundation for deeper joint innovation

SAN FRANCISCO, May 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Mesh, the leading crypto payments network, today announced a formalized partnership with Tempo, a Layer 1 blockchain purpose-built for payments. The partnership establishes Tempo's role as a settlement network within the Mesh ecosystem and gives enterprises a more direct path to high-throughput stablecoin payments at global scale.

As digital asset payments mature, enterprises increasingly face the same friction: settlement infrastructure that was never designed for payments. Existing blockchains are either fully general-purpose or optimized for trading, creating unpredictable fees, slow finality, and operational complexity that slows down real-world payment flows.

This formalized partnership addresses that directly. Tempo's combination of sub-second finality, stablecoin-native gas fees, and dedicated payment lanes strengthens Mesh's mission to standardize global crypto payments. Enterprises on the Mesh network gain access to a settlement layer designed from the ground up for real-world payment volume, without the infrastructure sprawl that has historically come with it.

"Tempo was built to solve the exact problem we've been working to eliminate: payments infrastructure that gets out of the way and just works," said Bam Azizi, Co-founder and CEO of Mesh. "Deepening this partnership means enterprises on the Mesh network can move value on rails that are fast, predictable, and built for the scale that modern payment flows demand, including the machine-to-machine transactions that are fundamentally redefining what payments look like."

What the Partnership Delivers

• High-Throughput Stablecoin Settlement: Tempo's dedicated payment lanes and sub-second block finality give enterprises on the Mesh network a faster, more cost-predictable path to USDC settlement, with fees paid in stablecoins, no volatile gas token required, and blockspace guaranteed at the protocol level even when network activity spikes.

• Seamless Cross-Chain Liquidity: Combines Mesh's payment orchestration layer with Tempo's settlement infrastructure, enabling enterprises to bridge USDC from Ethereum and Base into Tempo automatically, with Mesh handling the routing so users pay with their preferred assets and partners settle in theirs.

• Agentic Commerce-Ready: Tempo's Machine Payments Protocol (MPP) enables autonomous agents and services to transact programmatically. Paired with Mesh's infrastructure, this positions enterprises to support next-generation machine-to-machine payment flows from day one.

This partnership is the latest milestone in Mesh's mission to standardize global crypto payments. Following the company's $1 billion valuation and $75 million Series C funding round, Mesh has focused on scaling its infrastructure into regions such as Latin America, Asia, and Europe, fueling product development and strengthening a global network that already reaches more than 900 million users worldwide. The company continues to build infrastructure for AI-driven commerce, stablecoin payments, and institutional settlement.

About Mesh

Founded in 2020, Mesh is building the first global crypto payments network, connecting hundreds of exchanges, wallets, and financial services platforms to enable seamless digital asset payments and conversions. By unifying these platforms into a single network, Mesh is pioneering an open, connected, and secure ecosystem for digital finance. For more information, visit meshpay.com.

About Tempo

Tempo is a payments-first blockchain incubated by Stripe and Paradigm. As stablecoins go mainstream, there's a need for optimized infrastructure. Tempo is purpose-built for stablecoins and real-world payments, born from Stripe's experience in global payments and Paradigm's expertise in crypto. We're building Tempo with core principles of decentralization and neutrality. Tempo will be a neutral platform with respect to stablecoins, allowing users to make transfers and pay gas fees in any stablecoin. The blockchain will be secured by an independent and diverse validator set, with a roadmap toward permissionless validators.

SOURCE Mesh