Customers
Scope | Description |
---|---|
read_customer | Required to read to the customer record. |
write_customer | Required to write to the customer record. |
write_payments | This scope is only needed when creating or updating customer payment token information. |
What is a Customer?
Recharge creates a Customer record when a customer checks out on an e-commerce storefront with a Recharge subscription.
The Customer object contains key information such as:
- The customer's Recharge
id
- Billing information
- The external id associated with the customer on an e-commerce platform
The Customer record changes when either a merchant updates the Customer information or when the customer themselves edit their information in the Recharge Customer Portal.
You may need to interact with the Customer object when, for example, a customer adds a new payment method to their account on an external e-commerce store or changes their billing information.
Note
Creating a customer within Recharge will not create a customer record within an external e-commerce platform at this time.
Customers and Addresses
The Addresses endpoint is a child of the Customer object. Customers can have many addresses associated with their account. Addresses cannot be associated with multiple customers.

The address nested under a customer resource is the customer's billing address associated with their payment method. It is not the address associated with delivery of a subscription. For the subscription shipping address, see Subscriptions.
Customer payment method
Update the customer object to add or update a customer's payment method. Recharge doesn't accept payment information directly. You should send a tokenized customer representation from the payment processor to add or update the payment method. When using Stripe as your payment processor, the customer token should begin with the prefix cus
, not tok
.
Customer FAQ
How to define and detect a churned customer?
You can use webhook customer/deactivated
to get information about customers (whether they are active or inactive). Customer is churned when his status is set to inactive and that happens when:
- Customer cancels subscription or subscription expires (if that’s the only subscription the customer had) and the subscription parameter
cancelled_at
will be shown, but if he has some other subscriptions with pending charges, he will remain active. - Max number of retries is reached on a charge and the store admin closes it out
- Something is auto-cancelled (
number_of_charges_before_expiration
is reached).
Calculating churn can be pretty difficult. Recharge Analytics allows you to gain granular insight in your churn metrics and cohort retention.
Updated almost 2 years ago
To learn about how you can view upcoming delivery schedules for customers, see the Customer Delivery Schedule page.