Third-Party Token / Third-Party Vaulting

Third-party vaulting is the capability within Spreedly's platform to import and use payment method tokens that originate from a gateway's own vault, rather than from the Spreedly universal vault. A third-party token is a token that a gateway has issued and that represents a payment method stored in that gateway's proprietary vault system. Spreedly can hold a reference to this third-party token and use it to process transactions through the originating gateway, while the merchant progressively migrates their full payment method portfolio into the Spreedly universal vault.

The primary use case for third-party vaulting is migration management. When a merchant moves to Spreedly from a direct gateway integration, they typically have an existing base of customers whose payment methods are stored as tokens in the gateway's vault. Asking all those customers to re-enter their payment details simultaneously is not feasible, it would generate significant customer friction and revenue disruption. Third-party vaulting provides a bridge: existing customers' gateway tokens are imported into Spreedly as third-party token records, and transactions for those customers continue to process through the originating gateway using those tokens. New customers' payment methods are collected and stored as native Spreedly vault tokens from the start. Over time, as customers update their payment methods, or as the merchant runs proactive migration campaigns, the third-party tokens are replaced with native Spreedly tokens that work across the full gateway ecosystem.

The limitation of third-party tokens is that, because they are proprietary to the originating gateway, they can only process transactions through that specific gateway. They do not inherit the Gateway Agnostic portability of native Spreedly vault tokens. This is why migration to native Spreedly tokens is the goal, with third-party vaulting serving as a transitional mechanism.