Stripe Inc. and crypto venture capital firm Paradigm have launched public testing for their collaborative blockchain project, Tempo, opening the network to companies interested in building real-world stablecoin payment applications. Tempo aims to make stablecoin payments easily accepted by platforms by providing a simplified, plug-and-play experience. The network addresses the issue of escalating transaction costs associated with congestion in traditional blockchains by establishing a dedicated payment channel independent of the rest of the network. Tempo charges a fixed fee of 0.1 cents per transaction. New partners for Tempo include financial companies UBS and Cross River Bank, as well as prediction market operator Kalshi Inc. Previous partners include Deutsche Bank, Nubank, AI startups OpenAI and Anthropic. Matt Huang, co-founder and managing partner of Paradigm and head of the Tempo project, stated that the goal is to fill the gaps in experience for developers considering real-world use cases for stablecoins.