Customers are entities used to organize and manage saved payment methods. These include billing details, transaction history, and recurring payments. A customer record may contain their name, email address, phone number, billing, and shipping addresses. Having a customer association is not required to pay for transactions.

Creating a customer
Customers may be created in the following ways:

• Explicitly with POST /pay-api/v1/customers. This includes full customer details and optional payment methods.
• The Merchant Portal. Merchants and their partner can create customers through this portal.
• Implicitly with /pay-int-api/payment-sessions. When this endpoint's mode is either SaveMethod or PaymentAndSave, if customerId is not provided, one will be created.
• Implicitly with POST /pay-int-api/invoices/publish. If customerId is not provided, one will be created.

New customerId values can be reviewed with GET /v2/customers.

Pay transactions
Customers may pay transactions in one of three ways:

• Vaulted payments
• Standalone tokenization, also known as orphan vaulted payment
• Account supported

Vaulted payments
Customers can be associated with one or more vaulted payment methods. A vaulted payment method is a securely stored payment credential. This applies to credit card or bank account payments. A vaulted payment method is a securely stored payment credential. This is considered a more secure method rather than storing the card number directly. That information has previously been tokenized and saved for future use. Vaulted information can be safely accessed through a payment identifier. This is typically used for recurring billing, subscriptions, saved checkout experiences, and card-on-file transactions.

In the transaction payment, the field customerId is provided. The customer's vaulted payment methods are available for selection.

Standalone tokenization
Clients may use standalone tokenization, also known as an orphan vaulted payment. This allows a payment method to be vaulted even when the payer has not been recognized as a customer entity. The transaction proceeds using a previously established payment method identifier.

Standalone tokenization is useful when a payment method must be vaulted before a customer profile exists. This includes guest checkouts, delayed onboarding, account setup, or card-on-file collection before registration is complete.

In the transaction payment, the field customerId is omitted but paymentMethodId is provided. This indicates the merchant's orphan vaulted payment method is used.

Accounts Supported
Clients may use accounts supporting orphan payments. This is a form of a payment method that temporarily exists without a customer association.

In the transaction payment, both fields customerId and paymentMethodId are omitted. The transaction uses the credit or debit card, or bank account data supplied in the request.