Flutterwave, Africa’s largest payments technology company, has entered into a partnership with Tempo, a blockchain network designed specifically for payments, to strengthen its stablecoin payment infrastructure. The move comes eight months after Flutterwave announced a similar collaboration with Polygon.
The partnership was unveiled on Thursday at Money20/20 Europe in Amsterdam and will see Tempo integrated as a settlement layer for stablecoin transactions across Flutterwave’s consumer remittance platform, Send App, and its business payments solution, Flutterwave for Business (F4B).
Once implemented, the integration will enable wallet-to-wallet transfers using the dollar-backed stablecoins USDC and USDT, allowing individuals and businesses to send and receive money across borders through digital currencies.
The development highlights a growing trend among African fintech firms to adopt stablecoin-based payment systems as a means of reducing the costs and inefficiencies associated with cross-border transactions. Similar efforts have emerged elsewhere on the continent, including a recent partnership between Nigerian fintech Paga and the US-based blockchain network Sui to develop infrastructure for stablecoin payments and tokenised assets.
Flutterwave’s latest move also reflects a broader shift within the fintech sector away from consumer-focused cryptocurrency offerings and towards enterprise-grade payment infrastructure. Companies such as Yellow Card and Grey have already introduced stablecoin solutions aimed at businesses, either through direct blockchain partnerships or by leveraging specialist infrastructure providers.
According to Flutterwave founder and Chief Executive Officer, Olugbenga Agboola, the partnership with Tempo expands the company’s payment ecosystem by introducing additional stablecoin settlement channels. He said the collaboration would help eliminate friction in payment processes while strengthening Flutterwave’s multi-rail approach to global payments connectivity across Africa.
Tempo was launched by global payments company Stripe and crypto investment firm Paradigm in September 2025 before going live in March 2026. The Layer 1 blockchain was built specifically for stablecoin transactions, focusing on payments, remittances, subscriptions, supplier settlements and machine-to-machine transactions rather than decentralised finance (DeFi) trading activities.
Stripe has stated that Tempo is capable of settling payments in under a second while remaining compatible with compliance, accounting and reconciliation systems. Ahead of its launch, the company revealed that major firms including Visa, Nubank, Klarna and Shopify had joined the Tempo ecosystem.
The network offers several features tailored to enterprise users, including support for stablecoin-denominated payments, ISO 20022-compatible messaging, batch transactions, scheduled payments and fee sponsorship, which allows customers to transact without directly handling blockchain gas fees.
Flutterwave confirmed that Tempo will complement, rather than replace, its existing Polygon-based stablecoin infrastructure. The company intends to use both networks, selecting the most suitable option depending on transaction volumes, operational requirements and specific payment corridors.
However, Tempo remains in the early stages of development and is still working to establish itself at scale. Since launching in March, the network has processed more than 25 million transactions with a reported success rate of 94%, according to analytics firm Dune. This suggests that around 6% of transactions currently fail, indicating that reliability challenges remain as adoption grows.
Network activity has also been relatively modest. Data from Token Terminal shows that Tempo was processing approximately 0.47 transactions per second (TPS) as of 3 June, significantly below its peak of 6.58 TPS recorded in March. Among more than 33 blockchains monitored for throughput and settlement performance, Tempo currently ranks 31st.
These figures fall short of the ambitious targets outlined by Stripe during the blockchain’s unveiling. At the time, Stripe Chief Executive Officer Patrick Collison stated that Tempo was ultimately designed to support up to 10,000 TPS, far exceeding the capabilities of established networks such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The issue of scalability is particularly important for Flutterwave, which has processed more than $40 billion in total payment volume since its launch in 2016. Should a significant share of that volume eventually be routed through Tempo, the blockchain will need to prove that it can handle substantially higher transaction volumes while maintaining speed, reliability and settlement finality.
Compared with several newer blockchain networks, Tempo’s early growth has been relatively restrained. Artemis data shows that Layer 1 blockchain Monad attracted $242 million in stablecoin capital during its first week, while Coinbase-backed Base drew around $75 million and MegaETH secured nearly $36 million shortly after launch.
Tempo’s stablecoin velocity, which measures how frequently stablecoins circulate within a network, reached approximately 2.6 times during its first week. This compares with around 18.5 times for Monad and 15 times for Base over similar periods, largely driven by trading activity and liquidity incentives.
The network recorded $5.3 million in stablecoin supply during its first week on mainnet in March. By 3 June, that figure had increased more than fourfold to $22.4 million as liquidity gradually expanded.
For payment providers such as Flutterwave, increasing stablecoin liquidity is a positive indicator, signalling deeper market activity, stronger network usage and a more robust foundation for handling larger payment volumes.
Although Tempo remains at an early stage, the steady growth in stablecoin balances suggests that the network is gradually building the liquidity required to support real-world payment use cases. Its slower growth relative to other blockchains reflects its focus on payments rather than speculative trading, liquidity mining and other activities that often drive rapid capital inflows.
For Flutterwave, the partnership represents a strategic bet that Tempo’s payments-first approach will become increasingly valuable as liquidity, adoption and network effects continue to strengthen.
