Stripe Connect - share customers without payment method

Question

I am currently hitting a roadblock implementing Stripe Connect into our platform. We want to allow multiple connected accounts to use our platform to sell some sort of tickets. For this we wanted to use Standard accounts with Direct Charges (since we want to take a cut and also not have to deal with refunds/disputes etc.).

On our end the end-user has to either select or create a customer on our platform (created in our Stripe account) and then provide their payment method details through Stripe Elements. The documentation states that you need to create a PaymentIntent for the connected account, but this is not possible while also supplying the previously saved customer (because the customer only exists on our platform).

Now another documentation outlines that it is possible to share customers between connected accounts. The issue with this is that for this step you already seem to need a payment method attached to the customer:

If your platform uses the Payment Methods API, you must create a PaymentMethod from that customer.

The linked documentation outlines how to clone payment methods of customers between linked accounts, but this once again assumes that we already have a confirmed/attached payment method.

So my question is: How can we allow customers to be shared between all connected accounts without having to supply a payment method first? After the first payment (and if the customer chooses to do so) we want to save (and later clone if necessary) this payment method for future payments on all connected accounts.

For normal payments you can create a PaymentIntent with a customer but without a payment method and only supply the latter on the client (in our case stripe.js)

Answer 1

Since you're using Standard accounts, you have to use Direct Charges when accepting payments on behalf of that connected account. This means that the PaymentIntent has to live on the connected account, alongside the Customer and the PaymentMethod if any.

If you want to re-use the payment method details for other accounts in the future though, the PaymentMethod itself and its associated Customer has to live on the platform account.

Unfortunately, there's no way to "clone" a PaymentMethod from the connected account back to the platform today. This means that you have to change your integration logic slightly and approach the overall flow differently.

The idea is that you first need to collect payment method details in the platform. Since you're not taking an immediate payment during that step, you want to use the SetupIntent API. This is the flow documented here that will let you create the SetupIntent on the platform and collect card details securely client-side.

Once you have this information, you will now have a Customer cus_A in the platform, with the PaymentMethod pm_123 attached to it. That is the first step of the flow.

Now, you want to accept a payment on the connected account. So you first need to clone the PaymentMethod on that account as documented here. That will give you a brand new PaymentMethod pm_xyz that lives on that connected account. You can then use that PaymentMethod to confirm a new PaymentIntent on that connected account and passing payment_method: 'pm_xyz' to attempt to charge that saved card.

Note that it is possible this requires a "next action" such as doing 3D Secure as it's on a different account which could come with different restrictions.

In the future, if that customer comes back and wants to pay another connected account, you'd do a new clone of the PaymentMethod on that account and a new PaymentIntent for that cloned card and you can repeat it each time they pay a new business.

It can seem a bit convoluted at first, but once you grasp the flow of all the objects it does make sense overall!