Growth Stories: Igor Lyubimov, Founder at web2wave

For fast-growing startups, the ability to seamlessly and efficiently process payments isn't just a convenience—it's a fundamental pillar of success.

We spoke with Igor Lyubimov, the founder of web2wave, to gain insight into the evolving landscape of payment challenges facing businesses that leverage web-to-app strategies.

His story offers valuable insights into the inspiration behind web2wave, the pivotal role payments play in its business model, the hurdles its clients face, and the strategic decision to embrace payment orchestration as a catalyst for future growth.

Find out how 150 high-growth businesses are navigating payment challenges and how the smartest startups are starting to treat payments not as plumbing, but as a lever for growth. Get the report.

Interview

To start, could you share the story behind web2wave? What inspired you to start the company, and how has it evolved?

My journey with web2wave began while working at Find My Kids, a large mobile app focused on child safety with millions of users. Around the same time, I launched R Founders Mobile Apps—a community for mobile app founders—and noticed a surprising trend.

More and more apps were ditching mobile-first strategies for key flows like onboarding and payments. Instead, they were moving these entirely to the web. Some even abandoned mobile user acquisition altogether, relying solely on web funnels.

That shift caught my attention. I dug deeper and realized there was a huge, fast-growing market here, some companies were generating billions in revenue through web funnels built around quizzes and complex logic.

Building the quizzes themselves isn't the challenge for these businesses. The real challenge came after the quiz: charging users, integrating with payment systems, and the mobile app, and then sending conversion events to various analytics and marketing platforms. 

Initially, I built a tool for myself to launch my own applications. But after a month or so, I realized I really enjoyed the coding aspect and wasn't so keen on the marketing side. That led me to pivot, and I built a platform to help others create these web-to-app quizzes. That's how web2wave started. 

How do payments fit into your business model? What role do they play in your customer experience and growth strategy?

Payments are crucial to our business model, I'd even say they are the most essential part. While we help our clients build effective quiz funnels, our core value is ensuring a seamless and efficient payment process. 

Ultimately, our goal is to simplify our clients' entire payment experience, remove friction, and help them maximize their revenue.

What are the typical payment challenges that clients face?

We see a few recurring payment challenges for our clients. 

Firstly, the technical integration itself can be pretty complex. Clients often have specific requirements for how they want payment methods displayed, such as having an Apple Pay button above a card form or wanting PayPal in a particular spot. Then you add in things like subscription introductory offers and free trials, and it becomes even more intricate to implement.

Secondly, chargeback rates are a significant issue, particularly for subscription-based businesses. Sometimes users don't fully grasp that they've subscribed, and when they see a recurring charge, they initiate a chargeback. While we can assist with refunds and cancellation processes, high chargeback rates pose a significant risk to our clients' accounts with Payment Service Providers (PSPs).

Thirdly, we have observed that different PSPs perform differently in various markets. For example, if a company is based in the EU but its end-users are in the US, the conversion rates can be lower than if it were also in the US.

Finally, some of our clients operate in niches that traditional payment providers are not comfortable with, even if the business is legitimate and not engaging in any harmful activities. This limits their options and creates challenges for them.

Learn what questions to ask when picking a payment service provider.

What payment challenges have you personally encountered as you’ve scaled web2wave? Have payment issues ever directly impacted your revenue, operations, or customer experience? If so, how?

As web2wave has grown, we’ve seen firsthand how payment issues can affect our clients and, by extension, us. Clients had their PSP accounts blocked due to high chargeback rates in several cases. It’s a nightmare: frozen funds, lost recurring revenue, and no access to customer tokens, which the provider holds.

We’ve also seen clients with hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue held back by their PSPs. This is a serious hit to cash flow, and in some cases, it wipes out their profit margins entirely.

And then there's the issue of payment provider restrictions. We've had clients in particular niches that certain PSPs won't work with, which limits who we can serve and requires us to find alternative solutions.

So, while these issues are not directly related to our payment processing, they certainly impact our clients' experience and ability to operate, ultimately affecting our reputation and our ability to grow.

What made you start looking for a payment orchestration platform? Was there a specific problem or opportunity that pushed you in that direction?

It was really a combination of all these factors.

The recurring problems with chargebacks and the risk of account closures were a major concern. We needed a way to better protect our clients. 

Then, we began to understand the impact of lower authorization rates with our primary PSP in certain regions, and we recognized the need to integrate with additional payment providers to address this issue.

Managing all these different payment integrations was becoming increasingly complex, and we needed a more streamlined approach to managing them.

How did you first come across Primer, and what stood out to you?

We first heard about Primer from our clients who were already using it. After that initial introduction, I decided to explore other platforms as well, like Spreedly. 

But Primer stood out for a few reasons.

Firstly, the user interface is clean. Everything is intuitive, from adding integrations to managing payment flows. 

Secondly, the ability to design the payment form was a big plus. The forms on other platforms I looked at were quite basic, and while we could build our own custom forms, that would have made the integration much more complex. Primer struck a good balance.

Finally, I am really impressed with the support and guidance we are receiving. The team has been very helpful in helping us understand the best PSPs for our clients' different needs and use cases. That level of support made a big difference.

We're very optimistic about the impact Primer will have on our business and our clients' success. We're aiming for a 10x growth this year, and Primer will be a key enabler in achieving that.

What to learn more about what Primer can do for you? Get in touch.