The art of invisible payments: How Convelio is scaling with Primer

Convelio is using Primer to embed payments into its technology, helping it expand into the US and build a seamless experience for some of the world’s leading art businesses.

The art market deals in extraordinary objects. But behind every sale is the less glamorous work of getting those objects from one place to another.

When Convelio’s founders were working with antiques and design furniture, arranging the logistics could be painfully slow. A shipping quote alone could take anywhere from 48 hours to five days, with multiple intermediaries adding complexity along the way.

Coming from the technology world, Edouard Gouin and his co-founder, Clément Ouizille, thought there had to be a better way. They built an algorithm that could calculate shipping prices instantly, and from there, began a journey of rethinking the logistics behind moving art. 

That idea has since grown well beyond shipping.

Today, Convelio employs around 140 people across Paris, London, and New York, and is entering a new phase of growth. It closed its Series C earlier this year, while a global partnership with Phillips has put its technology behind the operations of one of the world’s largest auction houses.

What started with faster shipping quotes has grown into a much broader business, combining physical services with software that is increasingly embedded in the day-to-day work of galleries and auction houses. 

Edouard describes the ambition simply: “We are essentially building what we call the operating layer for the art market.” 

As Convelio makes more of the art world’s operations feel seamless, payments need to disappear into that experience too. That need is what first led Convelio to Primer, giving the team a way to simplify payments without compromising the experience it had built for customers.

Gabriel Le Roux, co-founder and CEO of Primer, sees a clear parallel in what the two companies are building.

“Convelio and Primer are solving a very similar problem at different layers. Convelio takes the complexity behind moving art and turns it into an experience its customers don't have to think about. Primer does the same underneath payments. That shared philosophy is what makes this partnership so meaningful.”

Keeping complexity out of frame

Convelio’s customers are experts in art, not payments. The company’s goal is to give them the technology they need without worrying about everything happening in the background.

That philosophy made Primer a natural fit.

The first challenge they tackled together came as Convelio looked to bring the technology it had built in Europe into the US.

Its payment model couldn’t simply be replicated there. Convelio needed customers to be able to pay through its own interface while funds were directed to the appropriate art business behind the scenes.

Using Primer’s Workflows, Convelio could build those payment flows into its own product, so its customers didn’t have to manage the payment setup themselves. More than that, it could let clients bring their own PSP, allowing their existing payment setup to sit behind the Convelio experience rather than forcing them onto Convelio’s provider.

“Primer does orchestration at the payment level. We do orchestration at more of an operational level,” says Edouard. “As a company, our job is to be able to offer the service: we can ship art, we can store art, and we should manage the payments. Obviously, we're not payment experts, so for us, it makes a lot more sense to partner with Primer.”

Without that foundation, Convelio would have had to take on more operational overhead or send buyers through a separate payment experience. Either option would have undermined the seamless, state-of-the-art (pun intended) experience Convelio had already worked so hard to build.

With Primer, Convelio could adapt to the payment requirements of the US market without rebuilding its own product around them.

“Primer has allowed us to do that and opened a whole new market for us,” explains Edouard. “If we were unable to offer that solution, we would not have been able to tackle the US market, which is about 44% of the art market as a whole.”

A bigger canvas for growth

Opening the US market was a significant win for Convelio, but the impact went beyond entering a new geography. It also gave the company the foundation it needed to support much bigger commercial opportunities.

One of the clearest examples is its global partnership with Phillips, one of the world’s largest auction houses.

For Convelio, winning a relationship of that scale was another major milestone. The two companies spent around six months exploring how best to work together, with Convelio adapting its technology around Phillips’ operations. Today, Convelio manages much of Phillips’ shipping volume out of London and New York.

Edouard says Primer played “an important role” in making the partnership work. For Phillips, Convelio could accommodate the payment setup it already used within the Convelio experience, rather than asking Phillips to change how it processed payments or sending buyers  into a separate payment journey.

“The workarounds we were discussing without Primer would have been really suboptimal. Now we're able to offer essentially the best client experience you can think of in our market because we integrated with Primer and we're able to do that in the US,” Edouard adds. 

And that gets to the bigger value of the partnership. Primer isn't simply making Convelio’s payment flow smoother. It is giving the company the flexibility to meet the payment requirements of major partners without reshaping its own business around them, opening the door to opportunities that would otherwise be much harder to support.

Gabriel sees that as an important distinction. “The best payments infrastructure shouldn't just make the payments you already have easier to manage. It should expand what the business can do next,” he says. “For Convelio, the ability to support the payment setup Phillips needed within its own experience was critical to making that partnership work in the US.”

Built into the bigger picture

Convelio is now deepening its presence in the US and continuing to roll its technology out across its larger customers. 

And its use of Primer is growing with it. Having started with a specific US payment challenge, Convelio is now looking to broaden its own payment setup, adding more PSPs and payment methods.

What began as a way to solve a specific expansion challenge has become something more fundamental. 

Convelio is building technology that disappears into the operations of the art businesses it serves. Primer is increasingly doing the same within Convelio.

“Primer is definitely part of Convelio and is going to be part of Convelio in the next couple of years. It's embedded in the solution that we're selling to clients every day,” Edouard says.