When the French furniture giant Conforama hired its first head of payments, it was after a significant incident of fraud.
“There was something wrong in the payment flow. We needed to correct it quickly but no one internally was able to understand what had happened,” Lucas Quinio, who joined as head of payments in 2022, says. “And with multiple payment partners, there was no one who understood the global architecture of the payment flow. It was a black box and very hard to pinpoint what was happening.”
Out of the challenge came an opportunity, and for his first two years, Quinio fought fires, prioritised fraud management and security, and shaped a payment strategy for the future.
Conforama reconfigured its global payment architecture, and started working with Primer — the world’s first unified payments infrastructure. Primer allows Conforama to add new payment services (such as PSPs, payment methods and fraud prevention services) easily, track and optimise payment performance, and ensure compliance and security.
A mindset shift
But this work has been a journey. Quinio says he’s had to work hard to change the culture around payments internally.
“It’s been a mindset shift,” he says. “I’ve spent a lot of time talking about why payments is a strategic asset that we should manage.”
Payments is one of fintech’s fastest-growing areas but its fragmentation can be a real headache for all businesses. Customers want to pay using their preferred method, whether that’s Visa and Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna or a local payment method, such as iDEAL in the Netherlands, or Swish in Sweden.
It will never be a priority for founders when they’re just getting started because they need to prove they’ve got a business first.
A survey by PayPal found 59% of customers will abandon their shopping cart when their preferred payment option is unavailable so optimising that checkout experience can make a big difference.
Despite this, payments innovation has not historically been top of the priority list. Most of the time, Theo Spyrides, Primer’s head of product says, founders just have too many other things to do.
“It will never be a priority for founders when they’re just getting started because they need to prove they’ve got a business first,” he says. For others, payments are sometimes seen as a technical challenge for the IT team to solve, rather than something that touches all departments, from finance and marketing, to customer success and product.
However, this starts to change when a business hits a certain scale, Spyrides says. Perhaps the leadership team wants to expand internationally and needs to add a local payment provider to their existing payment stack. Maybe transaction fees are too high and they need to look at an alternative, or conversion and authorisation rates are causing a problem.
Or, like Conforama, they may have been hit with incidences of fraud. Payments aren’t just about transactions anymore, Spyrides says — they play a central role in every business.
Major updates
Research by Primer, which surveyed 500 payment decision makers in the UK, France, US, Singapore and Australia in 2024, found four in five are working with payment stacks that need either major updates (57%) or a complete overhaul (22%).
Most are planning to do something about it — 87% of payment leaders are considering leveraging a payment orchestration platform in the next 12 months.
Payments is really at the heartbeat [of a successful enterprise]. It enables growth, it enables revenue and it enables profitability. It’s an unsung hero that touches every aspect of the business.
“The problem is, by the time payments are a priority, it can sometimes be too late,” Spyrides says, with a nod to legacy technology. “You have to build optionality, flexibility and optimisation into the foundations of a business.
“Orchestration is a solution to that, but it only solves part of the problem,” he adds. “That's why more businesses are looking towards using a payment infrastructure as a way to make payments a value driver in their business.”
Another — often overlooked — advantage of optimising payments is the value it can bring to investors and shareholders. For private businesses aiming to go public, de-risking the payment stack and investing in more effective treasury and account closing processes can enhance governance and improve exit readiness. For public companies, it can unlock shareholder value.
Sonali de Rycker, partner at Accel, is one investor who saw potential in Primer. The VC was so taken with the concept, she agreed to invest in Primer without a pitch deck and would lead the startup’s £14m Series A round.
“A sophisticated payment stack is necessary to create shareholder value,” she says. “Payments is really at the heartbeat [of a successful enterprise]. It enables growth, it enables revenue and it enables profitability. It’s an unsung hero that touches every aspect of the business.”
Evolving trends
For Spyrides, he expects to see how customers pay continue to evolve in the future, hopefully with more interoperability and collaboration between players. He’s hopeful about the European Payments Initiative, which plans to introduce Wero, a European digital wallet and instant pay system. It’s an idea inspired by the success of national payment schemes, such as Pix in Brazil.
You’ve done the marketing, you’ve built the website, you’ve created the product. If the payment doesn’t work, you lose every investment you’ve made along the way. That’s why it’s so crucial.
“Consolidation will provide better simplicity for merchants,” he says. “But until then, those that have the right payment infrastructure will be ahead. They’ll be able to optimise operations, make informed decisions and deploy quick experiments.
“It’s about future-proofing your business. Are you letting payments hold you back, or are you using them to propel your business forward?”
At Conforama, Quinio says there’s still work to do. But he feels confident that investing in the business payment stack was the right way to go.
“Payments are really important, because when your customer arrives on that page, your company has already invested a lot of money and energy to bring them there,” he says. “You’ve done the marketing, you’ve built the website, you’ve created the product. If the payment doesn’t work, you lose every investment you’ve made along the way. That’s why it’s so crucial.”
