Overview

Composer is Spreedly's unified payment and fraud orchestration platform, built by combining the Dodgeball logic engine with Spreedly's existing Composer product. With the addition of transaction processing in the fall 2026 release, Composer becomes a full transaction engine: customers can execute authorizations, captures, retries, and refunds natively within visual workflows without maintaining custom server-side gateway code.

Who is this guide for?

Customers currently using the Dodgeball platform for fraud orchestration and checkpoint-based logic — Checkpoint Studio, fraud provider integrations (Sift, Forter, Socure, Veriff), 3DS, and/or MFA. Their transaction processing today happens outside of Dodgeball via a separate gateway integration.

What changes in Composer?

• Existing Dodgeball customers are able to adopt Customers currently using the Dodgeball platform for fraud orchestration and checkpoint-based logic — Checkpoint Studio, fraud provider integrations (Sift, Forter, Socure, Veriff), 3DS, and/or MFA. Their transaction processing features in Composer. Existing checkpoints, workflows, and SDK integrations continue to function.
• Transaction processing can now be added directly into existing Dodgeball workflows, removing the need for a separate server-side payment execution layer after a checkpoint decision.
• The primary new requirement is Spreedly Vault: payment methods must be tokenized into Spreedly Vault before they can be processed through a Composer transaction processing node.
• SDK requirements:
  • The Composer (Dodgeball) SDK (Server & Client).
  • A payment method collection method - Checkout Headless or Express, or the JavaScript API (this is required alongside the server SDK; PM collection is not included in it). Implementation steps assume this has already been implemented.

Implementation steps

Phase 1 - Connect Spreedly Vault and gateways

1. Reach out to your account manager for access to Spreedly’s transaction processing services (Vault, Connect) and to create a Spreedly organization.
2. Add gateway connections via Spreedly Connect (app.spreedly.com). Connect the gateways to be used for transaction execution.
3. Confirm gateway credentials are correctly configured per region and merchant account. Gateway credential assignment to specific workflow branches is done in the canvas.

Phase 2 - Update SDKs

4. Update the Composer (Dodgeball) Server SDK on your backend — required to call Checkpoints and execute transactions.

Phase 3 - Tokenize payment methods into Spreedly Vault

5. Payment methods must be tokenized into Spreedly Vault to be processed by Composer Customers currently using the Dodgeball platform for fraud orchestration and checkpoint-based logic — Checkpoint Studio, fraud provider integrations (Sift, Forter, Socure, Veriff), 3DS, and/or MFA. If currently tokenizing via a gateway-native SDK (Stripe.js, Adyen web component, etc.), this step replaces or supplements that flow. A payment method collection method - Checkout Headless or Express, or the JavaScript API is required alongside the server SDK.

6. The tokenization call returns a payment_method_token. This token must be available on your server at the point where the Dodgeball Checkpoint is called, so it can be passed into the checkpoint event data for use by the Customers currently using the Dodgeball platform for fraud orchestration and checkpoint-based logic — Checkpoint Studio, fraud provider integrations (Sift, Forter, Socure, Veriff), 3DS, and/or MFA.

Phase 4 - Extend checkpoints with payment nodes (in the canvas)

All payment configuration — gateway selection, transaction type, response handling — is done in the Composer visual canvas. No additional API calls from your server are needed to trigger gateway execution once the checkpoint receives the payment_method_token.

7. In the Composer canvas, open your existing fraud checkpoints and add Customers currently using the Dodgeball platform for fraud orchestration and checkpoint-based logic — Checkpoint Studio, fraud provider integrations (Sift, Forter, Socure, Veriff), 3DS, and/or MFA. Their transaction processing nodes after the ALLOW decision branch. Configure in the canvas: gateway credential selection, transaction type (Authorize, Capture, Auth-then-Capture), Recover (if applicable), and response-branch handling (approve, soft decline, hard decline).

Phase 5 - Retire server-side gateway code

8. Once Customers currently using the Dodgeball platform for fraud orchestration and checkpoint-based logic — Checkpoint Studio, fraud provider integrations (Sift, Forter, Socure, Veriff), 3DS, and/or MFA. Their transaction processing nodes are active in the Composer workflow, retire server-side code previously responsible for calling the gateway after receiving a Dodgeball ALLOW decision. Validate that authorize, capture, refund, and void operations are all handled in the canvas before removing any server-side gateway code.

Phase 6 - Testing and go-live

9. Test in sandbox using Spreedly test card data. Validate all workflow branches: approve, soft decline, hard decline, and any retry paths. Validate that gateway credential mapping in the canvas routes to the correct gateway.
10. Test multi-gateway scenarios: confirm per-gateway routing and credential mapping fire correctly before production enablement.
11. Production cutover: Enable updated Composer checkpoints in production.