How to accept stablecoin payments: integration for B2B companies

Businesses accept stablecoin payments by choosing supported assets and networks, creating a payment interface, and connecting confirmed transfers to their order or invoice records. This guide covers integration models, payment controls, reconciliation, and the difference between onchain settlement and receiving bank money.

Accepting stablecoin payments adds a faster, fully programmable payment rail to your existing stack. It doesn't replace your existing banking relationships. It operates alongside them.

This guide covers the core benefits of stablecoins for B2B operations and how to accept stablecoin payments by integrating with Tempo.

Why stablecoins instead of ACH payments or wires?

You don't have to choose between the two. Adding stablecoin payment infrastructure to your payment stack doesn't mean you can't offer traditional methods like ACH payments or bank transfers. You're adding a faster lane, not rebuilding the entire highway.

Stablecoin payments give B2B companies another settlement option for supported global or multi-party payment flows. Here are some of the most significant ways stablecoin payment gateways add value to B2B payment infrastructure.

More predictable payment operations

Bank cutoffs, payment routes, and provider processing affect when funds become available. A stablecoin transfer can settle near instantly onchain. Funding, conversion, screening, and any bank payout remain separate stages with their own timing.

Tempo provides dedicated payment lanes and sub-cent network fees for standard stablecoin transfers. Payment lanes reserve capacity for eligible payment activity. A network fee is only one component of acceptance cost: provider, conversion, and withdrawal charges can still apply.

Programmable payment logic

Traditional payment solutions excel at moving money from A to B, but customization is limited. Smart contracts on Tempo let you define exactly how money moves. You can automate routing decisions, program fee logic, and configure customer-specific payment rules with no manual intervention required.

Transparent payment records and metadata

Traditional payments move funds with minimal context. Payments arrive with basic details like the transacting parties and amount sent, but supporting context such as timestamps and audit trails typically lives in disconnected systems. That means you have to manually reconcile the data after every transaction.

Stablecoin payments are verifiable onchain, so you can always check whether they've settled without asking a bank or other intermediary for updates.

Tempo takes this a step further by embedding structured metadata into each transaction. Payments come with everything businesses need to audit and verify payments, including:

• Transfer memos for easy reconciliation and record-keeping
• Tamper-proof history
• Precise timestamps
• Cryptographic signatures verifying authenticity

How do I accept stablecoin payments for my business? A five-step Tempo integration guide

Here's how to accept stablecoin payments on your website by partnering with Tempo.

1. Map your B2B payment use case

Start with the goal: what problem are you trying to solve, or what do you want stablecoin payments to unlock for you? This might be:

• Accepting invoice payments from B2B customers
• Enabling cross-border payments, global payouts, and remittances
• Settling marketplace participants
• Funding embedded accounts

2. Choose your integration model

B2B platforms and payment companies that want to control every part of the integration can build directly on Tempo using our developer documentation and SDKs. With a direct integration, your application needs to detect supported onchain payments, verify the asset, network, recipient, and amount, and reconcile them with the order or invoice.

Alternatively, evaluate ecosystem providers for hosted checkout, payment links, dashboards, or higher-level APIs. Support depends on the provider, account, payment method, asset, and network. Confirm those requirements before choosing the interface.

Choose a checkout, payment link, invoice, or recurring flow

A hosted checkout sends the customer to a payment page. A payment link offers a shareable collection page without a separate checkout integration. Embedded payment components place supported payment options inside a website or mobile app. These are interface choices around the same underlying acceptance workflow.

Stripe's stablecoin acceptance documentation provides one example spanning checkout, payment components, payment links, and invoices. Its payment-method support matrix explains why support must be checked for each interface rather than assumed from the provider's general stablecoin support.

For B2B receivables, use the stablecoin invoicing guide to define payment instructions, quote expiry, and partial-payment handling. For repeat collection, the stablecoin subscriptions guide covers consent, spending permissions, failed payments, and cancellation. One-time acceptance does not automatically enable recurring debits.

3. Configure payment, compliance, and settlement rules

Tempo gives you granular control over a wide range of parameters, including:

• Who can make and receive payments. This is governed by Tempo's Policy Registry (TIP-403) specification. By configuring allowlist and blocklist policies, you maintain control over who can interact with your platform.
• Supported digital assets. Tempo supports payments in supported stablecoins bridged to or issued on Tempo from blockchains across the Web3 ecosystem. Users can also pay transaction fees in any supported stablecoin, such as USDC.e or USDT0.
• Settlement destinations. Predefine where funds should land after a payment goes through. You can also use virtual addresses for each customer to manage funds without creating separate onchain TIP-20 balances.
• Conversion rules. If your payment flow requires converting between stablecoins, use the built-in decentralized exchange to make the swaps automatically.
• Gas sponsorship. Tempo lets you cover transaction fees on behalf of customers, removing one of the biggest obstacles to user adoption.

4. Connect payment data to finance workflows

The next step is connecting payment records with transfer memos. A memo holds a 32-byte reference, such as an opaque invoice ID. Keep customer details and invoice contents in your application: memos are public transaction data, and the limit is 32 bytes, not 32 characters. Your integration uses that reference to find the corresponding finance record.

Tempo's reconciliation process is based on onchain events. Every time a stablecoin transfer happens with an attached memo, a TransferWithMemo event is emitted. The event is indexed so teams can filter for the values they need, simplifying payment matching.

This onchain event flow is the core of Tempo's native reconciliation features. If you need additional tooling, you have ecosystem partners to choose from.

Build a payment request that finance can reconcile

A payment link, QR code, or invoice should lead to a clear payment request: which network and token to use, where to send it, how much is due, and which reference identifies the order. The checkout interface belongs to your application or provider. Test that the wallets your customers use preserve the requested reference.

For example, an invoice requesting 1,000 USDC.e on Tempo could use the reference INV-2048. The customer record, purchase order, and billing details stay in the business's database. If the wallet cannot send a memo, customer deposit addresses provide another attribution method. These addresses credit a shared account; your application maintains the customer ledger.

Verify delivery before fulfilling an order

An invoice is paid only after your system verifies the expected delivery. A wallet confirmation screen, matching memo, or successful API request is not enough. Follow the receiving guide to check the network, token contract, recipient, amount, and successful receipt. Receive policies can hold a transfer instead of delivering it to the intended recipient.

Save the network, transaction hash, and transfer log index as a unique event key. Record the event and update the invoice together so a repeated notification cannot credit the customer twice. Recover missed activity after a connection interruption. Route underpayments, overpayments, expired requests, and missing references to an exception queue rather than automatically fulfilling the order.

Treat refunds as a separate payment

For a direct onchain payment, a merchant refund is a new outbound transfer linked to the original payment. Verify the refund destination with the customer and payment provider, especially when the original payment came from an exchange or shared wallet. Do not assume its sending address is a suitable refund address.

Track approved, submitted, and confirmed refund amounts against the original invoice, including earlier partial refunds. Keep a refund ID in your records and use a payment reference to connect the new transfer. If submission times out, inspect the submitted transaction before retrying. For a Routes payment, distinguish a provider refund from a merchant refund and follow the delivery and refund states.

5. Test, monitor, and scale the payment flow

The final step before going live is ensuring everything functions as it should. That means:

• Sandbox testing to validate your integration on Tempo's testnet before handling real money
• Monitoring for failed or delayed payments so you can act quickly when issues arise
• Setting up exception handling to catch and triage issues automatically
• Running reconciliation checks to confirm that onchain transactions map cleanly to internal records
• Defining finance team standard operating procedures so your team can integrate the new payment rail into its daily workflows
• Scaling to more customers or payment types

Build faster, programmable payment flows with Tempo

Stablecoin payments aren't just another cryptocurrency checkout solution for retail merchants on ecommerce platforms. For B2B companies, they're a fast, fully programmable way to accept structured payments with detailed metadata. With stablecoins, each transaction is simple and easy to reconcile.

Tempo combines dedicated payment lanes, token policy controls, and fee sponsorship. Applications still need to enforce their payment rules, maintain customer records, and meet applicable requirements through their own operations and providers.

Find out more about embedding B2B-first stablecoin infrastructure into your products with Tempo today.

FAQ

Do stablecoin payments replace ACH payments and wires?

No. Stablecoin payments add a programmable payment rail alongside existing banking relationships, so businesses can keep offering ACH payments and wires where those methods fit the workflow.

What does a B2B company need to accept stablecoin payments?

Start by defining the payment flow, integration model, compliance and settlement rules, finance-system connections, and testing plan. Businesses can build directly on Tempo or work with an ecosystem provider for higher-level APIs and interfaces.

How do businesses reconcile stablecoin payments?

Transfer memos and TransferWithMemo events can connect each onchain transfer to a customer ID, order number, invoice, or other internal reference so finance teams can automate payment matching.

Can an application sponsor network fees for customers?

Yes. Applications can sponsor Tempo's sub-cent network fees on behalf of customers, so users do not need to manage a separate gas asset.

Continue learning: Stablecoins for business · Stablecoin payments · Cross-border payments