Each transaction or rebill within your FastSpring store is associated with a customer account. If a customer completes a transaction with an email address that is not associated with an existing account, FastSpring creates a new account and stores the contact information from checkout. If the customer purchases an automatic rebill subscription, FastSpring also stores their payment method for future rebills.

Each customer account has a unique account ID. FastSpring associates all subsequent orders in your store that contain that email address with the account ID. Subscribe to account.created and order.completed webhook events to obtain the account ID. 

If an existing customer places an order with a new email address, or in a separate store, they will have multiple account IDs. The store and email address must remain the same for FastSpring to recognize the existing customer account. 

Information that FastSpring Stores in the Customer Account

FastSpring associates the following information with each customer account:

• Customer Information: first and last name, street address (if you collect it at checkout), email address, phone number, country, preferred language.
• Custom User ID: If you pass a custom account ID when you create an account, FastSpring stores it with the associated customer information. You can use the API to retrieve it.
• Payment Tokens: If a customer opts in to save their payment information, FastSpring tokenizes the information. Opting out of this changes their subscription to a manual renewal subscriptions

If you run your own authentication, or have your own account records, we recommend updating the FastSpring account information each time information on your record changes.

Payment Details

FastSpring does not store credit card, PayPal, or SEPA information. Instead, we tokenize the information and store it with the customer account information. This only applies if the following information is true:

• The order contains 1 or more automatic or managed subscriptions.
• The customer selected the Securely save payment details for automated subscription renewal checkbox for their manual-renewal subscription.

FastSpring does not share stored payment information with anyone. Customers can see the last 4 digits of their credit card in their Account Management portal, however this is only accessible to them.

Retrieve Customer Information

Use the FastSpring API to retrieve, create, or update customer information associated with an existing account. This includes the following:

• First and Last Name
• Email address
• Phone number
• Company

This does not include payment information. 

Retrieve an Account ID

To obtain an existing account ID, make a call to /accounts using the associated order ID or subscription ID. Alternatively, there are 2 ways to send a customer their account ID:

• Use the /accounts endpoint to create a new account before they submit an order.
• Subscribe to the account.created webhook to capture account data.

Update Account Information

Use the /accounts API endpoint and the account ID to update customer account information. If you pass new information when you set up an order with their account ID, FastSpring does not update their account.