Accept PayPal & cards with Braintree in DaloyJS

Braintree is PayPal's full-stack payments gateway. A single integration gives you PayPal, cards, Venmo, Apple Pay, Google Pay, ACH, and local payment methods. This guide uses the official braintree Node SDK and the modern server-side PayPal flow.

Pick the right Braintree SDK

Braintree ships two server SDKs and PayPal ships a third. Don't mix them up:

braintree (this guide) — the long-standing Braintree server SDK. Uses the classic REST/XML gateway with a polished promise-based API. Production-ready, actively maintained, and what every Braintree docs example uses.
@braintree/graphql-client-node— a thin GraphQL client for the same gateway. Useful if you want to write GraphQL queries directly, but you'll re-implement a lot that the classic SDK gives you for free. Skip unless you have a reason.
@paypal/paypal-server-sdk — the PayPal RESTSDK (Checkout / Orders v2). Different product, different account, different API. Don't install it for a Braintree integration.

1. Provision

Sign up for a sandbox account and grab your Merchant ID, Public Key, and Private Key from the sandbox control panel.
In Settings → Processing, link your sandbox PayPal Business account so PayPal nonces flow through the same gateway as cards.
When you're ready, repeat with a production account and swap Environment.Sandbox for Environment.Production.

2. Install

pnpm add braintree

The package bundles its own TypeScript declarations — no @types/braintree needed.

3. Environment variables

# .env
BRAINTREE_ENVIRONMENT=sandbox          # or "production"
BRAINTREE_MERCHANT_ID=use_your_merchant_id
BRAINTREE_PUBLIC_KEY=use_your_public_key
BRAINTREE_PRIVATE_KEY=use_your_private_key

Public and private keys are bothserver-side secrets despite the names — the word “public” here means “safe to log alongside the merchant ID”, not “safe to ship to the browser”. Keep both out of client bundles.

4. Plugin

// src/plugins/braintree.ts
import braintree, { BraintreeGateway, Environment } from "braintree";
import type { App } from "@daloyjs/core";

function envFor(name: string | undefined) {
  switch (name) {
    case "production":
      return Environment.Production;
    case "qa":
      return Environment.Qa;
    case "development":
      return Environment.Development;
    case "sandbox":
    default:
      return Environment.Sandbox;
  }
}

const gateway: BraintreeGateway = new braintree.BraintreeGateway({
  environment: envFor(process.env.BRAINTREE_ENVIRONMENT),
  merchantId: process.env.BRAINTREE_MERCHANT_ID!,
  publicKey: process.env.BRAINTREE_PUBLIC_KEY!,
  privateKey: process.env.BRAINTREE_PRIVATE_KEY!,
});

export interface BraintreeClient {
  gateway: BraintreeGateway;
  clientToken(customerId?: string): Promise<string>;
  sale(input: {
    amount: string;            // string, two-decimal — e.g. "10.00"
    paymentMethodNonce: string;
    deviceData?: string;
    orderId?: string;
    customerId?: string;
    submitForSettlement?: boolean;
  }): Promise<{ id: string; status: string }>;
  parseWebhook(signature: string, payload: string): Promise<unknown>;
}

export const braintreePlugin = {
  name: "braintree",
  register(app: App) {
    const client: BraintreeClient = {
      gateway,
      async clientToken(customerId) {
        const res = await gateway.clientToken.generate(
          customerId ? { customerId } : {},
        );
        return res.clientToken;
      },
      async sale(input) {
        const result = await gateway.transaction.sale({
          amount: input.amount,
          paymentMethodNonce: input.paymentMethodNonce,
          deviceData: input.deviceData,
          orderId: input.orderId,
          customerId: input.customerId,
          options: {
            submitForSettlement: input.submitForSettlement ?? true,
          },
        });
        if (!result.success) {
          // result.message + result.errors.deepErrors() carry the details.
          throw Object.assign(new Error(result.message), {
            code: "BRAINTREE_SALE_FAILED",
            errors: result.errors?.deepErrors?.() ?? [],
          });
        }
        return { id: result.transaction.id, status: result.transaction.status };
      },
      parseWebhook(signature, payload) {
        return gateway.webhookNotification.parse(signature, payload);
      },
    };
    app.decorate("braintree", client);
  },
};

declare module "@daloyjs/core" {
  interface AppState {
    braintree: BraintreeClient;
  }
}

5. Generate a client token

Your browser SDK (Drop-in, Hosted Fields, Fastlane) needs a fresh client token to talk to Braintree. Pass an optional customerId so returning customers see their vaulted payment methods:

import { z } from "zod";
import { App, secureHeaders, rateLimit } from "@daloyjs/core";
import { braintreePlugin } from "./plugins/braintree";

const app = new App();
app.use(secureHeaders());
app.register(braintreePlugin);

app.route({
  method: "POST",
  path: "/checkout/client-token",
  operationId: "createBraintreeClientToken",
  request: {
    body: z.object({ customerId: z.string().optional() }),
  },
  responses: {
    200: { description: "ok", body: z.object({ clientToken: z.string() }) },
  },
  handler: async ({ body, state }) => ({
    status: 200,
    body: { clientToken: await state.braintree.clientToken(body.customerId) },
  }),
});

6. Create a transaction

Once the browser SDK returns a paymentMethodNonce (and, for fraud scoring, deviceData), submit a sale. Always send amount as a string with two decimals — floats lose pennies.

app.route({
  method: "POST",
  path: "/checkout",
  operationId: "checkout",
  request: {
    body: z.object({
      amount: z.string().regex(/^\d+\.\d{2}$/),
      paymentMethodNonce: z.string().min(1),
      deviceData: z.string().optional(),
      orderId: z.string().max(36).optional(),
    }),
  },
  responses: {
    201: {
      description: "transaction settled or submitted",
      body: z.object({ id: z.string(), status: z.string() }),
    },
  },
  handler: async ({ body, state }) => {
    const tx = await state.braintree.sale({
      amount: body.amount,
      paymentMethodNonce: body.paymentMethodNonce,
      deviceData: body.deviceData,
      orderId: body.orderId,
      submitForSettlement: true,
    });
    return { status: 201, body: tx };
  },
});

For recurring charges that re-use a vaulted payment method while the customer is offline, swap paymentMethodNonce for paymentMethodToken and add transactionSource: "recurring" to the sale request. Braintree's built-in Recurring Billing sets this for you; only do it manually if you wrote your own subscription engine.

7. Receive and verify webhooks

Braintree posts webhooks as application/x-www-form-urlencoded with two fields: bt_signature and bt_payload. Pass them to webhookNotification.parse(), which verifies the signature and rejects tampered payloads with an InvalidSignatureError. You don't hash anything yourself.

app.route({
  method: "POST",
  path: "/webhooks/braintree",
  operationId: "braintreeWebhook",
  request: {
    // Braintree posts form-encoded data.
    body: z.object({
      bt_signature: z.string(),
      bt_payload: z.string(),
    }),
  },
  responses: {
    200: { description: "ack", body: z.object({ ok: z.literal(true) }) },
    401: { description: "bad signature", body: z.object({ error: z.string() }) },
  },
  handler: async ({ body, state }) => {
    let notification: Awaited<ReturnType<typeof state.braintree.parseWebhook>>;
    try {
      notification = await state.braintree.parseWebhook(body.bt_signature, body.bt_payload);
    } catch {
      return { status: 401, body: { error: "invalid signature" } };
    }

    // Notification shape: { kind, timestamp, transaction?, subscription?, dispute?, ... }
    // Hand off to a queue; ack within 30s or Braintree will retry.
    await enqueueBraintreeEvent(notification);
    return { status: 200, body: { ok: true as const } };
  },
});

Braintree expects a 2xx within 30 seconds and retries hourly for up to 24 hours in production (3 hours in sandbox). Always do the work in a background job and return 200 fast.

Errors & result objects

The SDK doesn't throw on declined transactions — it resolves with result.success === false and details under result.message, result.transaction.processorResponseCode, and result.errors.deepErrors(). The plugin above turns the unsuccessful result into a thrown error so it lands in your problem+json mapper. For genuine network failures the SDK throws an exception directly.

Runtimes

The braintree package uses Node's http/https modules and reads cert/key files from disk on init. It runs on Node, Bun, and AWS Lambda without changes, but is not compatible with Cloudflare Workers or Vercel Edge. On edge runtimes, hit the Braintree GraphQL API directly over fetch with HTTP Basic auth (public key + private key).

Deprecation policy

Braintree publishes a server SDK deprecation policy: major versions are supported for 3 years and you should pin a recent major inpackage.json. Stay current — old SDKs lose support for new payment methods, new fields, and security patches.

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