To start collecting real money with Spreedly you have to plug in a payment gateway. Test sites work against a built-in "bogus" gateway that allows you to run fake money transactions and try the system out, but once you're integrated and ready to start charging real customers you'll need your own payment gateway.

The way it works is that your customers come to Spreedly and enter their payment information, and Spreedly then passes that information to your payment gateway (along with how much is being charged) and the gateway actually captures the funds. The money is captured straight into your merchant account so Spreedly never actually touches it. Your customers' money is yours and yours alone, and Spreedly's monthly and transaction fees get paid via the payment method you enter when you activate your production site.