SPREEDLY
Doug Fry, Senior Product Manager at Spreedly, outlines why owning tokens – not just storing data – is becoming central to scaling secure payments globally
Payment ecosystems are increasingly complex, and, in light of this, tokenisation is becoming a strategic layer that underpins control, portability and performance rather than a background security measure. For merchants facing vendor lock-in, rising compliance demands and the rise of agentic commerce, the ability to own and move payment tokens is becoming central to how they scale.
Doug Fry, Senior Product Manager at Spreedly, says that shift is exactly why tokenisation is back at the top of the agenda. Tokenisation, in Doug’ s view, is the foundation that allows businesses to reduce dependence on single vendors, improve recurring payment performance and build a more flexible architecture around how customer payment data is stored and used.
“ Tokenisation is actually one of the things that was a founding principle for Spreedly very early on,” Doug explains.“ But it’ s really re-emerged as a key driver and key need for merchants because the ecosystem has gotten a lot more complex. We have things like agentic commerce and non-traditional, simple payment flows that are starting to emerge more and more.
4 August 2026