Key Developments
Visa’s crypto division launched a tool allowing AI agents to make same-day payments, just as Stripe-backed Tempo launched its blockchain and payments protocol.
“Excited to share Visa CLI, the first experimental product from Visa Crypto Labs,” Cuy Sheffield, the head of Visa Crypto Labs, posted to X on Wednesday.
A website for Visa CLI, meaning a command line interface where users type what action a program must take, says the tool will give an AI agent “the ability to securely pay for what you need as you code.”
The tool also said it allows for “programmatic card payments without the pain of API keys.” API keys can include sensitive information that AI agents can leak, causing security risks.
Market Context
It’s the latest standard seeking to allow AI agents to make payments online as hype around AI and stablecoins grows.
Coinbase launched its x402 standard to facilitate agentic stablecoin payments in May, which was most recently integrated by Sam Altman’s World in a developer toolkit for AI agents released on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Tempo blockchain, backed by payments company Stripe, launched on mainnet on Wednesday, releasing a payments protocol for AI agents.
Tempo posted to X that its blockchain was “purpose-built for payments” and focused on servicing high-throughput stablecoin transactions, currently one of the most popular ways AI agents are used.
“Agents can already write code, coordinate services, retrieve data, and execute complex workflows across the internet. But as these systems become more capable, they increasingly need to transact,” Tempo said.
What To Watch
Agent payments will soon overtake human payments on the internet. The Machine Payments Protocol (@mpp) is a new open standard co-authored by @stripe and @tempo.
It’s designed to be extensible and payment-method agnostic, already supporting stablecoins, cards, and more. pic.twitter.com/dEjfGN2tp9
— Tempo (@tempo) March 18, 2026
The project also launched the Machine Payments Protocol, an open standard that it developed with Stripe, which it described as giving “a standard way for agents and services to coordinate payments programmatically.”
Tempo said the protocol “is designed to be rail-agnostic and extensible,” noting that Visa had extended support for the protocol on its card payments network while Stripe is supporting “cards, wallets, and other payment methods.”
The crypto fintech Lightspark had also extended support for the protocol over the Lightning Network for Bitcoin (BTC) payments.
