Spreedly is a payments platform for (primarily) online commerce. We're a set of API's around a credit card vault and/or working with multiple payment gateways. One thing we don't do is act as a merchant account or payment gateway directly. This leads to a lot of head scratching from some people. Why Spreedly? Maybe a good place to start is "Why anyone?" when it comes to payments. What are the basic building blocks for any online/mobile payment application?

  1. No credit card data touching your side of the equation. You want your payment provider to capture that before it touches your environment to minimize PCI scope
  2. A way to store credit card data for additional/repeat/recurring charges
  3. An API and documentation that your developers will enjoy vs curse
  4. Complete control in terms of end to end design flow or experience.

Things like fees, currency support, local payment types, disbursements and recurring might be important but they vary in significance from person to person. The above 4 are the fundamental building blocks. Good news. Every day there's a new payment solution entering the space that addresses the above requirements. Or an existing payment provider enters your market and brings you choice. (A payments developer in Australia noted via Twitter that after years of a fairly static environment they've added Stripe, Braintree and Pin Payments in just 12 months!) 

So why Spreedly? Well, there might be several reasons why you can't work with a single, modern payment gateway. Once that happens you're really either forgoing your own credit card vault or investing in building one - not cheap, fast or easy. Spreedly provides the basic building blocks listed above and then lets you process and have the merchant account of your choice/requirement. One way to explain why Spreedly is to look at our customers/prospects by vertical and how they're using Spreedly. We recently launched a customer case study page. Below are some more text based examples:

  • Financial/Payments vertical: We have payment gateways and payment methods deployed or developing on Spreedly. They use our vault and our gateway connectivity and build a range of value added services on top that solve a geographical or vertical challenge. Here we really are infrastructure for payment services.¬†
  • Transportation: We have black car, taxi and bus focused services deployed or developing on Spreedly. These are sometimes direct services or sometimes aggregation services. By aggregation services I mean someone who provides a service that lets you book from a range of choices underneath. It could be a mobile app that allows you to get a taxi fare from 3 or 4 competing taxi services in your area then book right there. The app can charge your card on file against the payment gateway choice of that taxi service. Quick, clean and simple!
  • Food and Beverage: Let's say you build a better mobile app for ordering from a restaurant. Every restaurant is going to already accept cards. Or maybe you're out to convince sporting stadiums to use your mobile app so people can order from their phone in their seat vs stand in a 27 minute long line. A single integration to Spreedly helps you support existing legacy choices in the marketplace.
  • Ticketing/Reservations: There are a lot of 3rd party services that aggregate buyers and connect them with sellers. It's much easier to not be in the money flow in these situations (disbursements, chargebacks/disputes). So if you're building the ultimate vacation rental website or college ticket website Spreedly might be the way to go.
  • Fitness/Wellbeing: Maybe you just created the world's best online member management platform to tap into the exploding CrossFit market. That's great! Spreedly helps reduce the friction in your sales cycle by not having to also convince them to use your specific payment provider.
  • SaaS/Recurring services/Ecommerce: Third party full blown recurring services can use our vault and payment gateway infrastructure. We also have individual subscription sites - usually with pretty custom specific needs - utilize our vault and payment gateway/s. Newer ecommerce platforms can support the choices of their customers for their preferred payment provider.
  • Single Payment Gateway: There might be financial, geographical or legacy reasons for why you don't get to work with a more modern gateway. Spreedly gives you much of the goodness of a modern payment gateway while still letting you transact against a legacy choice (often with incredibly low processing rates)

Very early on in any sales conversation we're always asking ourselves: "Could these guys just go with a single payment gateway to solve this problem?" If the answer is yes we save everyone's time and send them in the right direction. 

If you're in a situation where going with a single modern gateway just isn't feasible then you'll immediately understand what we do. Lastly, about 2.5 years ago I read "What's Mine is Yours" by Rachel Botsman - a significant person in the world of collaborative consumption. It completely changed my outlook on how I viewed goods and services. 

Therefore, one of the things I really enjoy is when we help companies that are helping change the world via a sharing economy. We want more of you! :) 

You don't fit into the single, elegant, payment gateway box. That's why Spreedly.        

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