• US West Coast investor brings heavyweight expertise to truly global startup
• Funding paves way for rapid expansion across Europe, US and Asia
• Primer’s valuation rises over 600% since Series A in Autumn 2020
• Fully-remote team of more than 70 employees in 20 countries expected to triple in 2022
• Cements position as Europe’s fastest-growing no-code/low-code startup [1]

London & San Francisco – Tuesday 19 October 2021: Primer has closed a Series B funding round that values the payments infrastructure startup at $425 million only 20 months after being founded.

The $50M Series B fundraise was led by ICONIQ Growth, the San Francisco based investment firm that has backed global tech companies such as Adyen and Marqeta to Snowflake and Datadog. Existing investors, including Accel, Balderton Capital, Seedcamp, Speedinvest, and RTP Global all participated in the round. 

Primer, which was founded in early 2020 by ex-Paypal/Braintree employees and employs more than 70 people across 20 countries, has built the world’s first automation platform for payments.

Roy Luo, Partner at ICONIQ Growth, joins Primer’s Board. He commented: 

“Over the past two decades, the pace of new payment solutions entering the market has been accelerating dramatically to support global consumer demand for trends like mobile payments, digital wallets, 1-click checkout, buy now pay later, and so on. However, no one payment solution is close to accommodating all the changes and innovations that merchants need to keep up. So, for merchants’ payment and engineering teams, this dynamic forces immense technical complexity in tying together multiple payment methods, gateways, fraud detection, and more.”

With Primer, merchants can build new and better buying experiences with ease. Plug-in any desired payment solution with 1-click connections, define logic across the entire payment lifecycle with a drag-and-drop workflow editor, and create seamless, “smart” checkout experiences that meet today’s customer expectations. For the first time, merchants can connect and control their entire payments stack, and build their ideal payment flows autonomously from scratch.

Paul Anthony, co-founder at Primer, said: “Our past experience running hundreds of deep-dive technical workshops with some of the biggest online companies like Uber, Spotify and Airbnb, has given us unique insight into the deeply-rooted technical fragmentation that exists in global payments. 

“Primer offers all the underlying infrastructure for merchants to create new, better buying experiences for their customers. But, we’ve barely scratched the surface of how payments automation will disrupt payments for good.

“Our mission is to make payments a first-class product area in any business. ICONIQ Growth shares our expansive vision, so it’s hugely rewarding to add them to our Board as a trusted, experienced partner and advisor.”

Roy Luo added: “Primer is a team 100% focused on solving that one enormous problem. That’s a quality we look for in businesses we back. We love uncovering such single-minded focus on fixing an important technical challenge. 

“What the team has done to learn from hundreds of merchants while building its technology at pace and scale over the last 20 months is nothing short of phenomenal. We believe Primer’s poised to become the most disruptive force in payments for years and the category leader for payments automation.”

Gabriel Le Roux, co-founder at Primer, added: “With teams established and merchants live across Europe, Asia and North America, we’re primed to use this investment to expand our already global footprint. We have people deployed in 20 countries but need to grow our teams even more quickly to support the demand we’re seeing among both merchants and the third party services across multiple countries and sectors that want to work with us.” 

Caroline Hjelm, VP of Growth at Voi, Europe’s fastest-growing e-scooter ride platform and an early Primer customer, commented: “Crucial to our business success is the ability to expand to new cities and countries seamlessly. Primer has allowed us to add several payment methods without building and maintaining multiple integrations, helping us optimise our checkout experience and expand fast to new markets.”

Primer also creates a whole new, open distribution channel for services across the payments landscape to go-to-market. Any third party developer can build connections to integrate new services, from payment methods and fraud tooling to data warehousing and customer messaging platforms. Merchants simply ‘click and connect’ to the ever-growing list of services from within their Primer dashboard, requiring no additional code. Live connections include Checkout.com, Stripe and WorldPay as well as early adopters Klarna, Stitch Data and GoCardless.

Alex Naughton, Head of UK and Ireland at Klarna, which was one of the first payment methods to connect to Primer in early 2021, added: “Smooth payments are at the core of what we do and Primer is supporting us in delivering the best payment and shopping experience to our customers. We have been able to minimise integration time and bring our flexible and convenient payment solutions to even more consumers. We are excited about the opportunities ahead and look forward to integrating Primer across more retailers and geographies.”

Primer raised a $20 million Series A led by Accel in November 2020. 

— Ends —

Note to Editors

[1] Primer was named the fastest-growing no code / low code company in Europe by Sifted, August 2021  https://sifted.eu/articles/no-code-startups/ 

Contact

Carmen Dixon | [email protected] | +44 (0)7717 278846

About Primer

Primer is the world’s first automation platform for payments, offering merchants the underlying infrastructure they need to build better buying experiences for their customers.

For the first time, merchants can connect and control their entire payments stack, and build their ideal payment flows autonomously from scratch. Plug-in any desired payment solution with 1-click connections, define logic across the entire payment lifecycle with a drag-and-drop workflow editor, and create seamless, “smart” checkout experiences that meet today’s customer expectations.

Primer also creates an open distribution channel for services right across the payments landscape to go-to-market. Any developer can build a connection on Primer; merchants then simply ‘click and connect’ to the services they need to build their desired payment flows within their Primer dashboard, requiring no additional code. Live connections include Checkout.com, Stripe, WorldPay, as well as early adopters Klarna, Riskified, Stitch Data, and GoCardless.

Primer was launched in early 2020 by Paul Anthony and Gabriel Le Roux, former Braintree/Paypal colleagues. Primer raised a $50 million Series B funding round led by ICONIQ Growth in October 2021, less than a year after completing a $20 million Series A funding round led by Accel. The fully remote company, which now operates in over 20 countries, is also backed by Balderton, Seedcamp, Speedinvest, and RTP Global. www.primer.io 

About Iconiq Growth
ICONIQ Growth partners with exceptional entrepreneurs and leaders who drive global impact and change. We are inspired by visionaries defining the future of their industries by building company cultures that endure. Our unique investment platform harnesses the power of ICONIQ Capital’s vibrant ecosystem of founders, pioneers, and business leaders with the goal of delivering tangible value and amplifying our portfolio companies’ success from early growth stage to IPO and beyond. ICONIQ Growth’s portfolio of innovators includes Adyen, AirBnB, Alibaba, Alteryx, Automattic, BambooHR, Braze, Chime, Collibra, Coupa, Datadog, Docusign, Gitlab, Marqeta, Miro, Procore, Red Ventures, Relativity, ServiceTitan, Snowflake, Sprinklr, Truckstop, Uber, Wolt, and Zoom, among others. For more information and a complete list of portfolio companies, please visit ICONIQGrowth.com