How Spreedly Helps SeatGeek

SeatGeek uses Spreedly to store credit card data while remaining Level 1 PCI Compliant. People visit SeatGeek to purchase event tickets from one of their hundreds of affiliate companies. SeatGeek’s goal has always been to allow the user to buy tickets in a seamless way without leaving the SeatGeek check out, while still being able to take advantage of each of their affiliate’s inventory.

Before integrating with Spreedly in 2014, SeatGeek didn’t have a system for storing payment information, due in part to the daunting processes involved with Level 1 PCI compliance. That meant users had to enter their payment information each and every time they visited the SeatGeek site – not an ideal situation, particularly for retaining regular customers.

Russell D’Souza, SeatGeek’s founder, wanted to find a more elegant payment solution for his users, and that’s where Spreedly came in.

Out of the box Level 1 PCI compliance allowed SeatGeek to focus on their consumer front end

Thanks to Spreedly, SeatGeek is now able to offer two-tap payment functionality for returning users. That’s because once a user submits their payment information, Spreedly stores all of the customer data, acting as an intermediary between SeatGeek and the marketplace. SeatGeek is provided a token, and when a returning customer want to make a purchase, the token allows SeatGeek to call back that customer’s payment data from Spreedly.

Spreedly also took the burden of PCI compliance off of SeatGeek’s shoulders

“With Spreedly, we’ve gained the ability to offer an outstanding experience to users who come back to SeatGeek after making a purchase. That’s the beauty of the two tap functionality . . . People don’t want to put their credit card information into their phones. It’s a huge deterrent, and so if we can make them do it only once, every subsequent purchase they make on SeatGeek—across any one of our partners—is dead simple. You just tap a couple of buttons.”

RUSSELL D’SOUZA, FOUNDER SEATGEEK

“They do it without imposing a major development engineering hurdle, which would have happened if we decided to go in the direction of PCI compliance ourselves,” Russell explains. “We’ve talked to companies that have been forced to do it, to pull off this seamless checkout experience [on their own] and it’s been really great for us to find a partner who deals with the security and the regulations and the scrutiny that PCI compliance involves, and allows us to be more focused on building the consumer front end and be faster and more iterative.”

Working with Spreedly truly feels like a partnership

Thanks to Spreedly, SeatGeek is now able to offer two-tap payment. Seat Geek’s two tap payment process has improved their conversion rates and, Russell believes, the user experience. “And that’s the biggest benefit,” he says.

After all, roughly 40 percent of SeatGeek’s users are monthly returning users, and that number is growing. Russell says that one of the reasons Seat Geek has been able to grow – and will continue to do so – is because of the two tap functionality that Spreedly made possible.

Bottom line? “We have a very high impression of the quality and the caliber of the Spreedly engineering team,” Russ says. “They’re great. They make it easy to integrate and we feel like they’re a partner… We’ve been impressed by how much they’ve been able to dedicate to our partnership and our integration.”