Comment by powertower | Hacker News Reader

Comment by powertower | Hacker News Reader

My first reaction after going to the parent website (http://spreedly.com/) was that I don't understand what spreedly does exactly or why I would use it (vs. my paypal or 2CO account).

I'm guessing that Spreedly offers an API/front-end that 1) stores the credit card info for immediate (and future) billing + subscription purposes, then 2) sends the transaction to my paypal, and 3) offers some type of a billing/subscription panel I can use to manage everything.

The money stays in my paypal, and spreedly then bills my own CC for the use of the service.

I see the usefulness of the independent API and control panel, but...

Is that data (customer CC info) really transferable from spreedly to let's say more than 1 other provider right now (like Braintree)?

The data is absolutely transferrable today - we've had multiple customers leverage that transferability to switch (or augment) their gateway with just a configuration change.

Of course, it's not just about data portability; API consistency is a big deal as well. If PayPal (for instance) decides to lock down your account and not let you transact any longer, you don't just have to worry about getting your data out, you are also looking at another whole implementation cycle around a new API. Even if it's just a day of work (and usually it takes longer), that's a day you could've spent on your product instead of mucking around with gateway API's.

There are of course libraries that help make gateway API's more consistent, but as a committer on what is in my opinion one of the best - ActiveMerchant - they only get you so far. For instance, Core gives you transparent redirect on top of any gateway we support. That means lowered PCI compliance requirements and a great experience for your customers, and there isn't a library out there that can do that for you.

I know the spreedly guys, as well as outside devs who independently adopted spreedly. Everyone I know has said what a pleasure it has been to use the Spreedly API.

If you want a feature list, you can always go hit their site: http://spreedly.com/info/features

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