What Primer’s Series C Says About the Future of AI Payments
Primer’s new funding round is a milestone in AI payments infrastructure, where data-rich, unified systems are emerging as a foundation for automated, intelligent payment decisions at scale across merchants and payment providers. The company has secured USD 100 million (approx. RM460 million) in Series C funding, led by Sofina with participation from Peak XV Partners and existing investors including Balderton, Accel, ICONIQ, Tencent, and Speedinvest. This brings Primer’s total funding to USD 170 million (approx. RM782 million) as it positions its unified payments platform as an “operating layer” for global payments and finance. At the core is an architecture that aims to remove fragmentation between processors, acquirers, and fraud tools. Instead of treating AI as a bolt-on, Primer is pitching AI payment processing as inseparable from the underlying infrastructure that collects and standardises data from every transaction touchpoint.
Unified Payments Infrastructure as the Engine for AI Payment Decisions
Primer’s strategy rests on the belief that AI in payments fails without a complete, contextual view of each transaction. Many merchants still spread payment flows across several processors, acquirers, and fraud systems, which leaves AI models working on partial data. Primer’s unified payments infrastructure platform aims to solve this by sitting across the entire lifecycle from checkout to payout. According to Primer, it “captures over 400 data points per transaction and manages more than 95% of customer payment volume on average,” giving merchants a single data layer for AI-led decisions. By processing billions of transactions annually for brands such as GetYourGuide, Dialpad, and Printful, the company is building the kind of scale that AI agents need to learn and improve. This unified payments platform is framed as the prerequisite for reliable AI payment processing rather than an optional upgrade.
Primer Companion and the Shift From Insights to Autonomous AI Agents
The fresh capital will accelerate Primer Companion, the firm’s proprietary AI agent, from an insights engine into an autonomous decision-maker within merchant-defined limits. Launched in 2025, Primer Companion already helps merchants answer complex payment questions and surface contextual insights on performance and failures. The next phase is to let the agent run experiments, optimise routing, and execute decisions itself, while still keeping merchants in control of the rules and thresholds. CEO and co-founder Gabriel Le Roux argues that “in the next few years, every payment decision in a large business will be initiated, optimized or audited by AI.” If Primer can show that its agent improves approval rates, cuts fraud, and reduces costs without adding risk, it will raise the bar for AI payment processing tools and increase pressure on incumbents to embed similar capabilities natively into their platforms.
Investor Appetite and the Push Into the World’s Largest Payments Market
The Series C round, led by Sofina with Peak XV’s participation, signals strong investor confidence in AI payments infrastructure as a long-term theme in financial services. Sofina’s Head of Digital, Jean-François Burguet, said payments are “reaching a structural turning point, with merchants consolidating onto unified infrastructure and AI moving to the heart of every transaction decision.” Primer already processes billions of transactions each year and has seen particular traction in the largest payments market, which now makes up about one-fifth of its revenue with ARR doubling year-on-year. The company plans to increase that share to more than one-third by 2028 and will add up to 50 roles in the region. For investors, this expansion shows there is room for a unified, AI-first platform even in a landscape dominated by established payment processors and gateways.
Fintech Competition: From Processors to AI-First Operating Layers
Primer’s move up the stack from orchestration to AI-first operating layer changes the competitive map in fintech. Traditional processors focus on authorisation, settlement, and core connectivity, often leaving merchants to stitch together fraud, routing, and optimisation tools. Primer is pitching an alternative: an AI payments infrastructure that consolidates those functions into a single, merchant-controlled platform. This potentially shifts value away from point solutions and towards unified payments platforms that own the data and decisioning layer. As Primer Companion becomes more autonomous, established processors could find themselves competing less on raw connectivity and more on intelligence, experimentation capabilities, and data clarity. For fintechs building on top of payment rails, Primer’s model illustrates a broader trend: the next stage of competition will be about who controls the AI layer that decides how each transaction is treated, rather than who simply moves money from A to B.