Coinbase (COIN) and Primer Partner to Make Cryptocurrency a Standard Payment Method

Get instant alerts when news breaks on your stocks. Claim your 1-week free trial to StreetInsider Premium here.

Primer, the world’s first automation platform for payments and commerce, and Coinbase (NASDAQ: COIN) have announced a strategic integration that allows merchants in markets across the globe to add crypto as a standard method of payment at checkout.

Coinbase Commerce, Coinbase’s platform to help merchants accept cryptocurrency payments, can be added to Primer’s Universal Checkout with clicks, not code. This means merchants using Primer can now add crypto payments easily and quickly to their checkout page, which is critical given that 40% of global consumers say they plan to use cryptocurrency to make a payment within the next year.

“The payments landscape is evolving at a rapid pace, and consumers are expressing a tremendous amount of excitement for cryptopayments,” said Roy Zhang, Group Product Manager, Coinbase Commerce. “Merchants are faced with the challenge of building seamless checkout experiences that offer consumers the flexibility they want. With Coinbase Commerce and Primer working together, any merchant can make secure cryptocurrency payments as readily available to their customers as traditional payment methods like credit cards.”

Primer – which works with merchants operating across multiple industries through the UK, Europe, US and APAC – has experienced a growing appetite for crypto as a payment method. Merchants integrate with Primer once, and can then add Coinbase Commerce to their checkout page in just a few clicks, thereby seamlessly meeting increased customer demand for crypto payments, while also reaping benefits like lower fees and risk of chargeback rates to near-instant settlement and futureproofing their checkouts.

Together, Primer and Coinbase are streamlining crypto payment acceptance by eliminating the many individual and fragmented integrations merchants must build to accept different types of payment methods. With Coinbase, the challenges facing merchants around holding and managing cryptocurrency are removed, and with Primer, the complexity of adding crypto to their checkout is replaced with an easy, one-click solution.

“Cryptocurrencies are a fast-evolving reality of the payment landscape, and we’re excited to integrate Coinbase Commerce into Primer’s Universal Checkout to create the first solution that helps merchants easily and quickly accept cryptocurrencies,” said Primer co-founder Gabriel Le Roux. “We share an ambition to make crypto a commonly accepted payment method, and we want to help merchants implement it with the same ease and speed they’d experience with any other payment method. With Primer’s unique, no-code integration, merchants anywhere in the world can now add crypto to their checkout in just a few clicks.”

Seeking to manage an increasingly complex checkout experience as well as offer crypto payments, Compass Mining, one of the largest Bitcoin mining operations worldwide, became the first Primer merchant to connect with Coinbase. Since integrating Primer and Coinbase Commerce, Compass Mining has benefited from increased month-over-month transaction volume with high crypto authorization rates and low decline rates.

“We love the simplicity of quickly adding new connections like Coinbase Commerce and other payment providers within the Primer platform,” said Jameson Nunney, Chief Strategy Officer at Compass Mining. “We believe that this implementation will be instrumental in helping us reach our goal of growing globally and helping more people learn, explore and mine Bitcoin.”

Coinbase Commerce is the first of several cryptocurrency platforms connected to Primer, providing Primer’s fast-growing, global network of merchants the flexibility to integrate even more payment methods into their checkout.