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Two primitives

Every flow on Corridor is one of two things:
  • Collection: local currency comes in through a ramp partner, becomes USDC, crosses into the hub and is credited to the customer’s pathUSD balance.
  • Payout: the customer’s hub balance goes out to a spoke, either public (a partner pays local currency) or shielded (an Ironwood batch).
A cross-border payment is a collection followed by a payout. The customer’s balance on the hub sits between them, so the two halves can happen at different times, in different amounts, and through different partners.
Hub and spoke network with the Tempo hub at the centreHub and spoke network with the Tempo hub at the centre

Fig. 02 · Every flow is a collection into the Tempo hub or a payout out of it.

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Why a hub

N, not N²

A bilateral network of six regions needs fifteen links. A hub needs six. Every partner added reaches every customer and every other region on day one.

One place to hold money

Customers keep one balance instead of a float in each country. Pre-funding becomes a forecast on one number.

One place to reconcile

Every dollar passes through the hub, so every dollar is settled, held and reconciled in one ledger and visible to treasury.

New corridors need no code

A corridor is just a currency pair. GHS-HKD works the moment a GHS collector and an HKD payer exist.

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The hub is enforced

The planner refuses flows that bypass the hub. This is a correctness property, tested in routing.test.ts, not a convention:

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Priority flows

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Regulation of outbound flows

Outbound FX from markets such as Nigeria is regulated: import payments need a Form M and must go through institutions licensed for FX. Corridor stays infrastructure. The licensed PSP or IMTO holds the FX permissions and the KYC; Corridor carries the compliance references (invoice number, Form M number) in the saga data and produces the reconciliation trail as audit evidence.