SPREEDLY
“ Tokenisation really sits at the forefront of all of that – it is the foundation, pretty much, for anything you want to do in payments.”
Ownership and control One of the clearest themes in Doug’ s thinking is that data ownership should not be treated as an abstract legal point. In practice, he says, ownership only matters if merchants can actually control and use their data in the way they need.
“ Ownership is certainly important,” he explains.“ I think it’ s evolved to the point where owning your data is now really about controlling your data. It’ s not that you might own it technically in name – it might be yours – but if you have little control over what to do with it and how you can use it, and you can’ t quite adapt it to exactly the way you want to use it, then what good is that ownership?”
This control, in his view, is what turns tokenisation into a useful operating model rather than a simple storage mechanism. It gives merchants the flexibility to work with payment data securely while still tailoring the system.
“ You should have the right and the flexibility to adapt it to your particular needs,” Doug stresses.
Tokenisation, portability and vendor lock-in Token portability is a central part of the control story. Doug argues that if merchants can move tokens between providers, they are less exposed to vendor lock-in and better positioned to negotiate with suppliers.
“ It’ s built on trust, it’ s built on tokenisation, it’ s built on this framework to handle your data in an appropriate manner”
Doug Fry Senior Product Manager Spreedly
“ From a vendor lock-in standpoint, there are commercial aspects that our customers deal with where having that portability gives them leverage over some of their other vendors,” he says.“ They can say,‘ Because I’ m not locked in to you, because I have my tokens, I own my tokens, I can control where they go.’”
That portability also has practical implications for performance. For instance, if merchants can switch processing routes quickly, they can test improvements and act on them without waiting for a major system rebuild.
Doug continues:“ That portability – that almost instantaneous control – means merchants can make small adjustments very rapidly. If they see even just a small percentage improvement by going over here, they can make that decision. They don’ t have to spin up some big project to unlock that maybe 0.2 % performance uplift.”
6 August 2026