Spreedly Gives Merchants Control of Customer Credentials

Open payment platform provider Spreedly on Wednesday (July 15) announced the launch of a standalone payment vault, a move that allows merchants to store and manage customer credentials without committing to the company’s full payments orchestration suite.

The decision to unbundle the vaulting service reflects a broader shift in the financial technology sector toward merchant-controlled data. Historically, many payment service providers (PSPs) held customer credentials within proprietary systems, creating a significant barrier for merchants looking to switch processors or add regional providers. Spreedly’s new offering aims to provide portability, allowing tokens to work across more than 100 different payment providers without re-vaulting data.

“The vault has become the control point in modern payments,” Justin Benson, Spreedly’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. He added that merchants are increasingly seeking the ability to maintain their current providers while preserving the “optionality” to change course as they scale.

The strategic value of payment credentials has grown as services such as network tokenization and automated account updates — which help maintain authorization rates — become central to transaction performance. According to the company, stored-credential transactions currently represent 40% of the volume on Spreedly’s platform, an increase from 34% in 2022.

Mike Rivers, Spreedly’s chief technology officer, noted that an independent vault ensures merchants are not “locked into anyone’s roadmap.” The standalone product includes PCI DSS Level 1 tokenization to keep raw payment data out of merchant systems while providing a direct upgrade path to orchestration features. The company indicated that portable credentials will also be critical for the emerging “agentic commerce” market, where AI agents initiate purchases on behalf of consumers.

“While Spreedly has long offered payment vault capabilities as part of its orchestration platform, merchants can now begin with secure, portable credentials today and expand into additional capabilities over time on the same platform with no re-vaulting required,” the company said in its announcement.

Last month, PYMNTS interviewed Spreedly’s senior product manager Doug Fry about how vaulting can aid merchants. “If you’re a recurring merchant, then tokenization is really the lifeblood, and your vault is the lifeblood of your business,” Fry said.