Which payment method to use for Stripe Payment intent

Question

I'm trying to auto charge customers on stripe in NodeJS

I have an issue where some customers have a:

• default_source and some have
• invoice_settings.default_payment_method

My current workflow (C# WPF):

• Create customer + Add subscription to customer
• Get URL for portal
• Customer adds card details on stripe portal

This works fine and payment are running well.

I also charge for SMS fees using a nodejs api:

async function chargeSMS(stripeCusID,chargeValue,chemistName,chemistID,countSMS){
//console.log(stripeCusID);
//console.log(chargeValue);
let customerObject;
let payMethodID;
customerObject = await stripe.customers.retrieve(
            
);

console.log("PaymentID received:" + customerObject.invoice_settings.default_payment_method);
  
payMethodID = customerObject.invoice_settings.default_payment_method;
  
await stripe.paymentIntents.create({
    amount: chargeValue,
    currency: 'aud',
    customer: stripeCusID,
    description: 'SMS Charges: ' + countSMS + " sent",
    payment_method: payMethodID,
    confirm: true
},
function(err, response) {
    if (err) {
    console.log("Charge", err.message,stripeCusID,chargeValue,chemistName);
    return;
    }

    console.log("Successful SMS Charge:", response.id,chemistName);
    chemCharged(chemistID);
}) 

}

This has also been working fine as a Cron on 1st of each month.

My issue is that recently one of my customer's cards expired. They used my WPF to open the portal and add a new card This worked.

HOWEVER this new card on the portal is only listed as customer.default_source

Their invoice_settings.default_payment_method

Is now null!

So my code above fails.

I've checked and:

• All new customers using portal have their cards saved as invoice_settings.default_payment_method
• any time a customer adds a new card it is only added as defult_source

I ahve no idea why this is the situation but I'm using the stripe customer portal so i would have thought they would add in the same way!

Any ideas how I can fix this or figure out what I've done wrong?

On the stripe web portal (my business) I can see that this customer DOES have a default card, and it looks the same as any other customer, but the api side has it registered under the different section!

Answer 1

You can add the Card as the Customer's invoice_settings.default_payment_method yourself by calling the Update Customer API .

FYI in a subscription the precedence chain is:

1. Subscription's default_payment_method
2. Subscription's default_source
3. Customer's invoice_settings.default_payment_method
4. Customer's default_source