According to the source, Tempo has raised $500 million at a $5 billion valuation to build U.S. dollar–backed payment infrastructure, with backing from Stripe and Paradigm (source: social media post by the source). For context, Stripe has enabled USDC settlements on Solana and Base since 2024, signaling continued investment in on-chain dollar payments (source: Stripe official blog). Visa has reported cost and speed benefits from USDC settlement pilots, illustrating potential efficiency gains of dollar-backed payment rails that traders monitor for throughput and fee compression (source: Visa Newsroom). Traders tracking adoption can monitor USDC circulating supply, stablecoin volumes, and chain activity on Solana and Base to assess payment flow trends (data sources: Circle transparency pages, DefiLlama stablecoin dashboards, Artemis and IntoTheBlock analytics).