---
title: "Primer's $100M Series C: London Payments Infra Bets the US Wants Autonomous AI Checkout"
description: "Primer raised $100M Series C from Sofina and Peak XV to scale AI-native payments — US ARR doubling YoY as autonomous finance ops go mainstream."
date: 2026-05-21T00:00:00.000Z
tags: ["2026-vc-news", "startup-funding", "venture-capital", "fintech", "europe-vc", "ai-infrastructure"]
source: https://venturecapitaltracker.com/2026-primer-100m-series-c-autonomous-ai-payments
---

# Primer's $100M Series C: London Payments Infra Bets the US Wants Autonomous AI Checkout

> Primer raised $100M Series C from Sofina and Peak XV to scale AI-native payments — US ARR doubling YoY as autonomous finance ops go mainstream.

Payments teams still run experiments in spreadsheets. **Primer raised $100M** to let AI run them.

### What Primer sells
**Payments and checkout infrastructure** with an AI layer — routing, retries, tokenization, and now **AI Companion** for autonomous optimization across merchant finance stacks.

### Why the US matters
Primer already sees **~20% of revenue from the US** with **US ARR doubling YoY**. This round is explicitly **US GTM fuel**, not European comfort money.

### Investor bench
Sofina, Peak XV, Balderton, Accel, ICONIQ, Tencent, Speedinvest — **~€146.6M total raised** across rounds.

### Practical takeaway
**Founders:** Payments infra wins on **authorization rates and cost per transaction**, not dashboards.  
**Investors:** Cross-border payments AI is a **winner-take-most** category if you nail enterprise reliability.

### Sources
1. The Next Web: https://thenextweb.com/news/primer-secures-100m-series-c-autonomous-ai-payments
2. Axios Pro Rata: https://www.axios.com/pro/all-deals/2026/05/20/pro-rata-premium-first-look

**By:** [Venture Capital Tracker](https://venturecapitaltracker.com/editorial-policy)

**Editorial note:** AI tools assisted with research, structure, or drafting. Venture Capital Tracker retains human editorial responsibility for factual accuracy, relevance, and source quality before publication.