Primer

We're hiring Software Engineers here at Primer. With opportunities at all levels and across multiple teams, there could be a home for you. If you're interested in building the infrastructure and systems behind modern payments, solving complex technical problems, and working in a remote first, distributed team, we want to hear from you. Check out our open roles here 👉 https://primer.io/careers Tom Booth, Ellis Richards, Jason Fry Caitriona Staunton #lifeatprimer

Stablecoins shouldn't be seen as a replacement for existing payment rails, rather they are just another option in the toolkit. That's the view of William Artingstall from Citi. In a recent conversation with Theo Spyrides, he discussed why enterprise interest in stablecoins is growing, largely because of the potential advantages they bring, from reaching new customer segments to unlocking operational efficiencies. Despite the interest and value, adoption isn't quite there yet. Most large enterprises remain in an 'exploratory phase,' evaluating how tokenized forms of money would fit into the financial processes they already have in place. Check out the latest edition of 𝘗𝘢𝘺𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘜𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘭𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 to learn more.

𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗜 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗻: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘄𝗲’𝗿𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗮𝘀 𝘄𝗲 𝗴𝗼 When we started working on AI Companion, the goal was to create real, measurable value for payments teams. The easy route would have been to sprinkle AI improvements across the product. For example, instead of clicking through filters, you type what you want into a text box. We even built a few prototypes like that. They looked great in demos, but didn’t really change how teams operate. The challenge is that many payment teams are small, and the surface area they manage is large. They don’t need another feature, they need another pair of hands. 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝟭: 𝗔𝗜 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝘁𝗯𝗼𝘁 At Primer, we spend a lot of time asking “What if?” questions. That mindset has shaped how we build, and it’s shaping how we’re thinking about AI too. Last year, we asked: What if AI was more than just features bolted onto our product? What if it behaved more like a teammate? 𝘔𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘴𝘱𝘦𝘤𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺, 𝘢 𝘯𝘦𝘸 𝘱𝘢𝘺𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘢𝘭𝘺𝘴𝘵. If you hired an analyst, you’d expect them to learn what you are optimizing for and carry that understanding across conversations and reports over time. You wouldn’t expect them to “reset” every time a new workday starts. That led us in a different direction. Most AI products in payments today are conversational. We’re building something operational. Instead of adding AI features here and there, we're building AI Companion into the core of our platform. It may show up differently depending on which product you are using, but it should operate as the same underlying “analyst” throughout. This approach is harder. It forces Product and Engineering teams to think carefully about how context is stored, how recommendations are surfaced, and what actions require explicit approval. These aren’t small details, but decisions that’ll help us build a product our customers trust. It’s less flashy than adding AI buttons everywhere, but it understands our customer’s goals, monitors continuously, and helps them execute safely. Over the coming weeks, Aladin Taleb and the team will share what we are learning as we build and refine AI Companion. And since this started with a question, we’ll end with one: 𝘐𝘧 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘴𝘴𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘰𝘸, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘪𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘰𝘸𝘯? Let us know 👇

Hallo Berlin 🇩🇪 Tatiana Makhnik is on the ground at ITB Berlin this week, speaking with travel brands about how they’re modernizing their payments infrastructure. We’re already supporting leading travel companies like GetYourGuide and loveholidays to improve authorization rates, add resilience, and stay in control as they scale. So if you’re at ITB this week and want to see what that could look like for your business, connect and book time with Tatiana.

We're hiring a Senior Business Development Manager to lead our expansion across France and Benelux to accelerate our next phase of expansion. This isn't a role where you inherit someone else's territory. You'll own the outreach, shape the positioning, and feed market intelligence back into how we go to market. The ideal candidate is fluent in French and has experience working with enterprise businesses in France and Benelux. If you're someone who moves fast, thinks strategically, and wants to sell something that genuinely modernizes how companies run payments, apply today. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/ePEh_KyE Jason Fry | Tom Booth | Ellis Richards

Meet Primer this March 🌎 Here’s where to find us: 🇩🇪 ITB Berlin (3–5 March) Tatiana Makhnik 🇺🇸 MRC | Merchant Risk Council Vegas (16–19 March) Gabriel Le Roux, Resh Vamathevn, Stephanie Shum 🇩🇪 Merchant Payments Ecosystem Berlin (17–19 March) Pedro C., Tatiana Makhnik If you're attending any of these, we'd love to connect. Whether you're scaling into new markets, trying to improve authorization rates, or looking for a simpler way to manage payments, let's talk. Connect and book time with the Primer team attending each event and see where we'll be next: 🔗 https://luma.com/primerapi

Some of the world’s largest merchants are getting closer to their acquirers, sometimes even integrating directly to get a clearer picture of how their payments actually perform. As payment complexity increases, merchants are looking for more transparency into approval behavior, issuer responses, and decline drivers. And closer collaboration with acquirers can provide additional context that helps refine performance strategies. In this conversation, Theo Spyrides and William Artingstall from Citi discuss what changes when an institution like Citi operates on both sides of the flow, and why that vantage point creates new opportunities for merchants to improve performance. Dive into the full conversation: https://lnkd.in/ejQca424

What is a common trait you see in the people at Primer? We asked this question of our Primigos last year and heard firsthand what stands out about the people they build with every day. Highly accountable. Deeply curious. Serious about their craft. Generous with their expertise. Low ego, high standards. We are hiring. Learn more and apply for open roles here: https://primer.io/careers Caitriona Staunton | Tom Booth | Jason Fry | Ellis Richards

🎙️Payments Unfiltered is back with a new episode. Host Theo Spyrides is joined by William Artingstall of Citi, who has spent the past 15 years shaping how one of the world’s largest financial institutions approaches payments. They discuss why more enterprise merchants are connecting directly with acquirers, how stablecoins and crypto fit into real payments flows, and why closer collaboration between banks, fintechs, and merchants is becoming essential as payments evolve. Catch the full episode ✍️ Primer.io: https://lnkd.in/ejQca424 📹 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/e9SGf9Ys Search for Payments Unfiltered wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe to be the first to get new monthly episodes as they drop.

Network tokens are the future. But what happens when they don’t perform today? The reality is that token performance still varies. Issuers, acquirers, and regions are all at different stages of adoption, and support isn’t always consistent. So we built the ability for merchants to automatically fall back to PAN when a tokenized authorization fails. In some cases, falling back to PAN recovered up to 9% of transactions that initially failed. This doesn’t invalidate network tokens. They reduce fraud, improve lifecycle management, and often increase approvals. But the ecosystem is still maturing, and performance gaps exist. That’s why having control matters. Primer gives merchants the flexibility to adopt network tokens with confidence, while still capturing revenue wherever performance gaps exist. We break down the data and what merchants should watch in our latest blog from Aladin Taleb. 🔗 https://lnkd.in/eH_b_PYK