Digital finance innovator Zip Co (ASX:ZIP) has announced a partnership with Primer, a unified infrastructure for global payments and commerce, to expand and optimize its payments stack.

The announcement follows Zip’s recent year-end results, which revealed record transaction volumes (TTV) of $8.9bn (up 7.0% YoY) and record group revenue of $693.2m (up 16.1% YoY). In the US, Zip exited FY23 with positive cash EBTDA on a sustainable basis.

Primer unifies payment and commerce services while delivering a powerful set of payment recovery, success and insights tools to provide businesses with flexibility and visibility across their payments lifecycle. They will support Zip to access and connect new card acquirers and processors, fraud and communication tools to boost top line, while leveraging features such as fallbacks to reduce operational costs and build for contingencies.

The partnership with Primer will further drive distribution of Zip’s BNPL offering, lender WebBank, with plans for Primer to also add Zip as a payment option, enabling merchants across retail, fashion, travel and mobility industries to add Zip to their payments stack with just a few clicks.

Gabriel Le Roux, Co-Founder of Primer said:

“We’re thrilled to be the infrastructure of choice for Zip. While delivering localized payments expertise, optimization features and insights, we’re supporting leading companies like Zip to optimize payment costs and capture untapped revenue opportunities. Similarly to Zip, the U.S. is a strategic market for Primer, where we have experienced substantial growth and we anticipate a remarkable 30-fold surge in payment volume in 2023. We can’t wait to embark on this partnership and partner with Zip to support the company’s growth goals in the North American market.”

Zip Co-Founder and US CEO Larry Diamond added:

“With an $11 trillion total addressable market in the U.S., BNPL services account for a mere 2% of all payments. Our partnership with Primer not only accelerates Zip’s growth trajectory but also positions us to seize this colossal market opportunity in a scalable and sustainable manner.”