Covering Disruptive Technology Powering Business in The Digital Age

Written by: Izzat Najmi Abdullah, Journalist, AOPG.

Founded in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, Primer, a financial technology startup, has been making waves in the industry ever since its establishment. In order to help online businesses scale, automate, and simplify their payments and commerce stack, the company was launched with the aim of delivering “the world’s first automation platform for payment and commerce.”

With a completely unified checkout and payment integration, Primer enables merchants to truly consolidate their payment stack, giving them the underlying infrastructure they need to build better buying experiences for their customers. In addition, the platform allows them to connect and control their entire payment and commerce stack and build their ideal payment flows autonomously from scratch.

In a world where online payments are becoming increasingly important, Primer’s focus on payment methods is particularly timely. By simplifying the payment process for businesses, Primer is helping to make it easier for people around the world to shop online. As Gabriel Le Roux, Co-Founder of Primer, put it, “We’re solving a global challenge,” and it’s clear that Primer is well on its way to doing just that.

One of the many fascinating things about Primer is that its whole operation is conducted remotely, with employees stationed in 35 different countries. Gabriel explains that this decision was made so that they could tap into the local skills and experience of many people in their area and, at the same time, give them the liberty to work from anywhere. Having “someone on the ground understanding the local market to bring that experience in-house” is “the next best thing,” he said. Customers of Primer’s storefront are from all over the globe, including the Americas, Europe, and Asia, hence, their decision to be fully remote gives them the opportunity to have local experts stationed in their respective regions.

Having previously worked at PayPal and Braintree, Gabriel noticed a common problem that online businesses were facing. “Companies were expanding their payment stack, using more and more services to expand to new markets, create new commerce experiences, and provide unique checkout experiences to end-users,” he explained. “But the one thing that was lacking was an underlying infrastructure to power all these services and make sure they could all work together while providing a beautiful checkout experience to the end-users.” It was this realisation that led Gabriel and his co-founder to start Primer.

Throughout the conversation, Gabriel discussed the company’s unique selling points in comparison to similar payment automation services. “We are creating a new category of product. We’ve created a unique payments and commerce infrastructure that helps businesses rethink the way they shape their payment stack,” he said. “Primer is truly open and agnostic. We help businesses with their payments-to-commerce strategy and also help industry players with faster activation. Our goal is to be the biggest enabler in commerce.”

With its sights set on global expansion, Primer is actively pursuing opportunities in Asia. “Fundamentally, the problem we’re solving is global. Irrespective of your location as a merchant online, you want to optimise your stack and have a consistent experience at checkout,” Gabriel explained. “What we’ve seen is that Asia Pacific is spearheading the global shift towards digital payments. There are many, many wallets in the Asia Pacific, and we know that this trend is only going to increase. When we look at the market and the fact that cashless payment is going up, we see an opportunity to bring our underlying infrastructure and payments automation platform to the region.”

Gabriel also shared some significant trends that Primer is observing in the payment industry. “What’s interesting is that the Asia Pacific market is similar to Europe in terms of its hyper-fragmentation. We have a lot of local preferences, and this is where Primer’s expertise in creating an agnostic platform comes in handy,” he said. “We’re continuously adding payments and commerce services to our platform, including local payment methods, message wallets, communication services, and logistic solutions. With Primer, businesses can have a one-stop-shop for all their payment and commerce needs.”

As Primer continues to make waves in the payment industry, its commitment to creating an agnostic platform that is open to all businesses and service providers sets it apart from its competitors. With its expansion plans in Asia and its unique payments and commerce infrastructure, Primer is well-positioned to become a major player in the global payment industry.

During the interview, Gabriel also took time to go into the company’s approach to privacy and their long-term vision for the future. Primer is an infrastructure provider for payments and commerce, and with this comes a responsibility to ensure the security and privacy of its customers’ payment data. When asked how Primer ensures this security, Gabriel explained that they are PCI Level 1 compliant, which means they have to comply with a rigorous certification process review by QASE, and they store payment data in a centralised vault. Primer has implemented a lot of procedures internally to protect the data’s integrity and ensure that it remains hyper-regulated.

According to Gabriel, many companies have already benefitted from Primer’s payment automation platform. For instance, he told a moving tale about the company’s partnership with Zenyum, a healthcare brand aimed at consumers. Primer aided Zenyum in expanding its payments and payment stack within a single region, which helped the company save money and move more quickly with its payment strategy. According to Gabriel, Zenyum has managed to boost its monthly payment volume by “roughly 30% and its success rate of payments by around 12% since expanding to 9 new regions”.

Primer is constantly working to improve the lives of its clients by prioritising the needs of merchants and responding with feature-rich products. As an example, Gabriel highlighted that the company had recently released an observability tool to aid organisations in gaining visibility into the health and efficiency of their payment stack. This visibility gives businesses a clear view of processor performance in one place, so they can gain comprehensive insights into the performance of payments and unlock revenue-boosting opportunities.

Gabriel concluded by sharing his outlook on Primer’s future development over the next five to 10 years. He believes that Primer will continue to adapt to the needs of its users and grow as a payment and commerce platform while adhering to the company’s overarching mission, which is to supply tools and services that enable shop owners to future-proof their operations as well as build brilliant commerce and payment experiences.

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