40. Primer – taking the pain out of global payments

Founders: Gabriel Le Roux and Paul Anthony
Founded: 2019
Website: primer.io

For anyone dreaming of launching the next great ecommerce success story, “going global” probably feels like a pretty important part of that dream. But, all the opportunity of new international markets brings with it a thorny side issue – localised payment processes and protocols that seem to change unrecognisably from one territory to the next.

It’s a challenge that Primer cofounders Gabriel Le Roux and Paul Anthony hungered to take on. As former executives from PayPal, they knew that if they could make payments feel effortless in any region, then retailers could get on with the more important job of managing their brands and marketing their products and services.

“When Paul and I conceptualised Primer, we had a clear vision: to build a core platform that unifies a merchant’s global payment stack,” Le Roux says. “This would allow them to optimise costs, boost performance, scale at pace, and make payments a competitive advantage.”

We had a clear vision: to build a core platform that unifies a merchant’s global payment stack

Ecommerce merchants increasingly need to use multiple payment providers across different markets. In each instance, you need to take on a particular type of security protocol and fraud prevention standard, giving retailers a head-spinning challenge to stay on top of it all (and to monitor their revenue streams centrally).

“We’re here to unify the payments ecosystem so global merchants can accept, optimise and manage payments in one place, without code,” Le Roux explains. “It was an opportunity so obvious that we couldn’t quite believe somebody hadn’t already taken it.” 

Launching as it did in the ecommerce boom of the early pandemic period, Primer scaled fast and received significant early funding, including a $50m investment in 2021. 

We're here to unify the payments ecosystem so global merchants can accept, optimise and manage payments in one place, without code

However, this initial growth was followed by a painful scaling back, and the business was obliged to let some 85 members of staff go in 2022.

The founding team took this as an opportunity to build more patience into their business model, and has built up a diverse roster of clients including New Look, Printify, Voi, and Love Holidays.

In late 2023, the team secured further funding from Tencent, giving yet more credibility to their vision of a streamlined global payment platform.