The Customer Data & Vault layer provides can be used by itself or in combination with other services.
It is centered around the Profile Service, which stores non‑PCI customer data and relationships, and integrates tightly with payments, billing, invoicing, and settlement services.
The Profile Service is the source of truth for who participates in commerce — not how money moves.
The Customer Data & Vault layer enables you to:
- Model billable entities (what is being billed)
- Define accounts and payers (who pays)
- Store people and organizations as payers and/or contacts for the account
- Associate stored payment methods to payers
- Reuse this data across multiple downstream services
The Profile Service may be used:
- As part of the Billing & Invoicing Platform, or
- Independently, as a customer and payment-method vault
Billing and invoicing are optional. The Profile Service does not require Accounts or Billable Entities unless those services are used.
When used standalone:
- Merchants may create People or Organizations
- Payment methods may be attached directly to those entities
- No Accounts or Billable Entities are required
- The service behaves similarly to a customer wallet
- Payments — identify who is paying and which token may be used
- Billing & Ledger — determine responsibility for charges
- Recurring Billing — attach payment methods to accounts
- Invoices & Receipts — render customer-facing documents
- Payment Widget — present payer choices and saved methods
The Profile Service supports custom tags on most entities.
Tags may be used for:
- Client-specific metadata
- Audit and traceability
- Reporting and downstream enrichment
- Cross-service context propagation
Tags are consolidated when referenced by downstream services (such as Billing and Invoicing).
For details on tag structure, consolidation, and propagation, see the Tagging section.
To keep responsibilities clear, the Profile Service:
- Does not store raw card or bank account numbers
- Does not process payments
- Does not enforce billing logic or pricing rules
- Does not submit transactions to processors
Those concerns live in other services.
| Concept | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Billable Entity | The thing being billed (enrollment, subscription, service) |
| Account | Who is financially responsible |
| Person / Organization | A human or business |
| Payer | A role assigned to a Person or Organization authorized to pay on the account |
| Contact | A role assigned to a Person or Organization to receive comunications for the account |
| Stored Payment Method | A reusable payment token & metadata for a payer |
Each concept is explained in detail in the following sections.
- Customer Data & Vault provides shared customer context
- The Profile Service is the authoritative data store
- Data is reused across payments, billing, and UI experiences
- Sensitive credentials are always tokenized elsewhere