Primer's $100M Series C Fuels AI Payments Push

Jan de Vries · 2026-05-20

London-based payments infrastructure startup Primer just announced a $100 million (€86.2 million) Series C funding round. The money is going toward two big things: supercharging their AI capabilities for payments and finance teams, and accelerating their expansion here in the US. ### The Funding Details The round was led by Sofina, with participation from Peak XV Partners. All existing investors doubled down too, including Balderton, Accel, ICONIQ, Tencent, and Speedinvest. Total raised now sits at $170 million (€146.6 million). That's serious backing for a company that's only been around since 2020.  ### Why This Matters for Payments Gabriel Le Roux, CEO and co-founder of Primer, put it bluntly: "In the next few years, every payment decision in a large business will be initiated, optimised, or audited by AI. The question is whether the data those systems run on is complete because when you deploy agents across fragmented data, they don't just underperform, they make the wrong decision." He's right. Primer was founded by former leaders from Braintree and PayPal, and they've built a platform that gives finance and payments teams full visibility and control. It reduces complexity, improves performance, and helps capture more revenue - all from one place. ### The Data Problem Primer Solves Here's the thing about AI in payments: it's only as good as the data it runs on. And right now, that data is almost never complete. Most companies run payments through a messy jumble of processors, acquirers, and fraud tools. No single system gives a complete picture. When payments and finance teams start using AI, that fragmentation becomes a huge vulnerability. It can lead to widespread incorrect decisions - exactly what you don't want when money's involved. Primer was built on a simple idea: you need a unified infrastructure layer before you can layer intelligence on top. Today, their platform covers the entire payments lifecycle - from checkout to payout. They record over 400 data points per transaction and handle more than 95% of customer payment volume on average. ### What They've Achieved The company processes billions of transactions every year for brands like GetYourGuide, Dialpad, and Printful. That's real traction with demanding merchants. Jean-François Burguet, Head of Digital at Sofina, said: "Payments are reaching a structural turning point, with merchants consolidating onto unified infrastructure and AI moving to the heart of every transaction decision. Gabriel and the team have spent the past six years building the platform best suited to that future." ### Doubling Down on AI Following this raise, Primer is going all in on AI. They're expanding their proprietary AI agent, Primer Companion, which launched last year. It helps merchants answer complex payment queries and surface contextual insights. Now they're scaling it to run experiments, optimize performance, and operate autonomously within merchant-defined parameters. Le Roux explains: "We don't want merchants chasing problems or missing opportunities. With full context across every payment, Primer Companion can act on their behalf, knowing what's happening, why, and what to do next." ### US Growth Plans Primer already has solid traction in the US - it accounts for about a fifth of their revenue, with ARR doubling year over year. They plan to grow US revenue to more than a third of their business by 2028. To support that, they'll hire up to 50 roles in the region. This is a company that understands the future of payments is unified, intelligent, and data-driven. And they're positioning themselves to lead that shift.