Primer for Partners: Building the marketplace where merchants and partners connect and grow

When I worked at PayPal and Braintree, one thing became clear: getting merchants live was far harder than it should’ve been.

A merchant would be ready to go; contracts signed, launch date set. Then integration began, and everything slowed down. Weeks turned into months as merchants pulled engineers off other priorities to build the integration and make it live.

It happened repeatedly. And it wasn’t just painful for merchants who were forced to become payment experts just to scale. At PayPal and Braintree, we were directly impacted and couldn't recognize any revenue until the integration was completed and live payments were flowing.

Talking to peers across payment service providers (PSPs), fraud platforms, and adjacent services, I realized it wasn’t just us. Everyone was stuck in the same loop. And, as a result,  progress slowed, innovation stalled, and growth was held back for everyone involved.

Part of the reason we founded Primer was to fix that.

Reimagining how merchants and partners connect

We always envisioned Primer not as an orchestration layer, but as a foundational infrastructure for the payments ecosystem. One that seamlessly connects merchants with every service they need to manage and move money, without the complexity that’s traditionally held them.

For merchants, that means a single integration that gives them access to every service they need. No more months of development every time they need to add or make a change to a provider, just the freedom to move fast.

For providers, it’s equally transformative. Primer gives them a new distribution layer. One that makes connecting with merchants easier, going live sooner, and realizing revenue faster.

It’s a win–win.

Looking back, not everyone welcomed what we were building. Some in the industry saw Primer as a disruptor and a threat. And I understand why. We introduced a new way for merchants and providers to work together, one that challenged long-held ideas about control. 

But from the start, our goal has always been collaboration. And over time, the industry has come to see that. When merchants and providers connect through Primer, both sides grow faster.

The strength of our partnerships today, with industry leaders like J.P. Morgan Payments, Checkout.com, PayPal, Visa, Forter, and many others, shows how far we’ve come, and together, we’re processing billions of dollars for businesses globally.

Introducing Primer for Partners

But our success has also brought a new challenge: scale.

Every integration we build is deep and production-ready, not a surface-level connection. It takes time, care, and close collaboration with each partner to build. And as more providers look to connect through Primer, we’ve reached the point where scaling means rethinking how those integrations are built.

So we asked ourselves: What if we could flip the script? What if anyone could build and manage their own integration into Primer? And what if we could pivot our focus and build them a suite of products and services that would allow them to innovate faster, launching new features, expanding coverage, and tailoring experiences to merchant needs?

That’s what we’re introducing with Primer for Partners.

Primer for Partners is a new way for any service involved in the money movement journey to build directly into Primer. We’re allowing them to completely own their integration, and make their products instantly available to any merchant using Primer.

But it’s about more than simply connecting. We’re building an entire platform for partners that will give them the tools they need to create more value for their merchants. This includes the ability to:

Access new revenue opportunities: Tap into a constantly expanding network of merchants and partners. Turn integrations into active revenue channels through increased discoverability, transaction volume, and shared success across Primer’s ecosystem.

Innovate on your own terms: Take full control of their integration, roadmap, and updates. Ship faster, deliver more, and remove the dependencies that slow progress.

Build once, scale without barriers: Use no-code tools to manage their integration end-to-end and instantly reach Primer’s global merchant base,  unlocking frictionless distribution and growth.

Gain competitive insights that set them apart: Access real-time performance and resilience data to refine their offering, improve outcomes, and win merchants with proof that stands out.

This changes the model completely, creating a new foundation for a more open payments ecosystem, where every connection creates new potential for collaboration and growth.

Building an open future for payments

Primer has always been built for merchants: giving them the infrastructure to connect anything, work with anyone, and control their entire payment stack. That mission isn’t changing.

But I’ve also always believed that there shouldn’t be walled gardens in payments. The ecosystem is too interconnected, too complex for those models to stand the test of time. Instead it’s all about openness, connectivity and collaboration. 

That’s the future we’re building with Primer for Partners. A single, trusted layer where providers can integrate once and unlock access to global demand. Where the barriers between competition and collaboration dissolve, and the best solutions rise to the top based on performance.

And that, I believe, is what will make Primer the default way the industry operates.

Want to learn more? Get in touch.