Attaching a PaymentMethod to a Customer within PaymentIntent

Question

I am using ngx-stripe (frontend) and stripe-php (backend) and trying to create a Subscription for a Customer

I have successfully implemented a card element on the frontend, which calls stripe-php to create PaymentIntent. Before the PaymentIntent is created, I use the submitted information to create a Customer

Checking the successful payment in Stripe I can see the created customer attached to the payment and the payment has a payment method but if I check the customer, it shows as no payment method attached so I cannot create a Subscription for the customer

Create customer:

$this->stripeClient->customers->create([
        'name' => $customer->getName(),
        'description' => $customer->getDescription(),
        'email' => $customer->getEmail()
]);

Create payment intent:

$paymentIntent = $this->stripeClient->paymentIntents->create([
    'customer' => $customerId,
    'amount' => $amount,
    'currency' => $currency,
    'payment_method_types' => ['card']
]);

Which Stripe API methods(s) do I need to call to instruct Stripe to create a payment method for the customer using the submitted details?

Answer 1

If you’re using stripe.confirmCardPayment [0] to confirm the PaymentIntent, you can include setup_future_usage = off_session [1].

stripe.confirmCardPayment(clientSecret, {
    setup_future_usage : 'off_session',
    payment_method: {
      card: card,
      billing_details: {
        name: 'Jenny Rosen'
      }
    }
...

Including the setup_future_usage parameter will attach the payment method to the Customer, if present, after the PaymentIntent is confirmed and any required actions from the user are complete.

off_session indicates that your customer may or may not be present in your checkout flow. This is especially important for Subscriptions where your Customers are usually not available to make recurring payments on-session.

However, note that you don't need to create a PaymentIntent for a Subscription. You could save the card on the Customer for future use [2], then create the Subscription by passing in the Customer [3] and default payment method [4].

[0]https://stripe.com/docs/js/payment_intents/confirm_card_payment [1]https://stripe.com/docs/js/payment_intents/confirm_card_payment#stripe_confirm_card_payment-data-setup_future_usage [2]https://stripe.com/docs/payments/save-and-reuse [3]https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions/create#create_subscription-customer [4]https://stripe.com/docs/api/subscriptions/create#create_subscription-default_payment_method