Primer lands $100m Series C to scale AI-native payments platform

Primer, a unified payments infrastructure and intelligence platform for merchants, has raised $100 million in a Series C funding round to deepen its AI capabilities and support expansion in the United States. The round was led by Sofina, with participation from Peak XV Partners and continued backing from existing investors including Balderton, Accel, ICONIQ, Tencent, and Speedinvest. This latest round brings Primer’s total funding to approximately $170 million and follows the launch of its AI agent, Primer Companion, which uses unified transaction data to answer complex payment queries, surface anomalies, and recommend actions for merchants.

Primer’s new capital will be used to evolve Primer Companion from an insights and recommendation tool into an autonomous execution engine that can run experiments, optimize payment performance, and take actions within merchant-defined parameters. The company aims to embed AI across the full payments lifecycle, positioning itself as an AI-native operating layer that orchestrates processors, fraud tools, and payment methods on a single platform. Primer is also prioritizing US expansion: the US currently accounts for roughly one-fifth of its revenue, and the company plans to grow this to more than one-third by 2028, including hiring up to 50 new roles across sales, engineering, and customer success in the region. By coupling payments infrastructure with autonomous AI workflows, Primer is targeting merchants in ecommerce, travel, fintech, and digital platforms that are seeking higher authorization rates, lower fees, and better visibility over global payment flows.