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Customer Portal Session 

The Billing customer portal is a Stripe-hosted UI for subscription and billing management.

A portal configuration describes the functionality and features that you want to provide to your customers through the portal.

A portal session describes the instantiation of the customer portal for a particular customer. By visiting the session’s URL, the customer can manage their subscriptions and billing details. For security reasons, sessions are short-lived and will expire if the customer does not visit the URL. Create sessions on-demand when customers intend to manage their subscriptions and billing details.

Related guide: Customer management

Endpoints

The Customer Portal Session object 

Attributes

  • idstring

    Unique identifier for the object.

  • objectstring

    String representing the object’s type. Objects of the same type share the same value.

  • configurationstringExpandable

    The configuration used by this session, describing the features available.

  • createdtimestamp

    Time at which the object was created. Measured in seconds since the Unix epoch.

  • customerstring

    The ID of the customer for this session.

  • flownullable object

    Information about a specific flow for the customer to go through. See the docs to learn more about using customer portal deep links and flows.

  • livemodeboolean

    Has the value true if the object exists in live mode or the value false if the object exists in test mode.

  • localenullable enum

    The IETF language tag of the locale Customer Portal is displayed in. If blank or auto, the customer’s preferred_locales or browser’s locale is used.

  • on_behalf_ofnullable stringConnect only

    The account for which the session was created on behalf of. When specified, only subscriptions and invoices with this on_behalf_of account appear in the portal. For more information, see the docs. Use the Accounts API to modify the on_behalf_of account’s branding settings, which the portal displays.

  • return_urlnullable string

    The URL to redirect customers to when they click on the portal’s link to return to your website.

  • urlstring

    The short-lived URL of the session that gives customers access to the customer portal.

The Customer Portal Session object
{
  "id": "bps_1MrSjzLkdIwHu7ixex0IvU9b",
  "object": "billing_portal.session",
  "configuration": "bpc_1MAhNDLkdIwHu7ixckACO1Jq",
  "created": 1680210639,
  "customer": "cus_NciAYcXfLnqBoz",
  "flow": null,
  "livemode": false,
  "locale": null,
  "on_behalf_of": null,
  "return_url": "https://example.com/account",
  "url": "https://billing.stripe.com/p/session/test_YWNjdF8xTTJKVGtMa2RJd0h1N2l4LF9OY2lBYjJXcHY4a2NPck96UjBEbFVYRnU5bjlwVUF50100BUtQs3bl"
}

Create a portal session 

Creates a session of the customer portal.

Parameters

  • customerstringRequired

    The ID of an existing customer.

  • configurationstring

    The ID of an existing configuration to use for this session, describing its functionality and features. If not specified, the session uses the default configuration.

  • flow_dataobject

    Information about a specific flow for the customer to go through. See the docs to learn more about using customer portal deep links and flows.

  • localeenum

    The IETF language tag of the locale customer portal is displayed in. If blank or auto, the customer’s preferred_locales or browser’s locale is used.

  • on_behalf_ofstringConnect only

    The on_behalf_of account to use for this session. When specified, only subscriptions and invoices with this on_behalf_of account appear in the portal. For more information, see the docs. Use the Accounts API to modify the on_behalf_of account’s branding settings, which the portal displays.

  • return_urlstring

    The default URL to redirect customers to when they click on the portal’s link to return to your website.

Returns

Returns a portal session object.

POST /v1/billing_portal/sessions
curl https://api.stripe.com/v1/billing_portal/sessions \
  -u "sk_test_BQokikJ...2HlWgH4olfQ2sk_test_BQokikJOvBiI2HlWgH4olfQ2:" \
  -d customer=cus_NciAYcXfLnqBoz \
  --data-urlencode return_url="https://example.com/account"
Response
{
  "id": "bps_1MrSjzLkdIwHu7ixex0IvU9b",
  "object": "billing_portal.session",
  "configuration": "bpc_1MAhNDLkdIwHu7ixckACO1Jq",
  "created": 1680210639,
  "customer": "cus_NciAYcXfLnqBoz",
  "flow": null,
  "livemode": false,
  "locale": null,
  "on_behalf_of": null,
  "return_url": "https://example.com/account",
  "url": "https://billing.stripe.com/p/session/test_YWNjdF8xTTJKVGtMa2RJd0h1N2l4LF9OY2lBYjJXcHY4a2NPck96UjBEbFVYRnU5bjlwVUF50100BUtQs3bl"
}

Customer Portal Configuration 

A portal configuration describes the functionality and behavior of a portal session.

Endpoints

Invoices 

Invoices are statements of amounts owed by a customer, and are either generated one-off, or generated periodically from a subscription.

They contain invoice items, and proration adjustments that may be caused by subscription upgrades/downgrades (if necessary).

If your invoice is configured to be billed through automatic charges, Stripe automatically finalizes your invoice and attempts payment. Note that finalizing the invoice, when automatic, does not happen immediately as the invoice is created. Stripe waits until one hour after the last webhook was successfully sent (or the last webhook timed out after failing). If you (and the platforms you may have connected to) have no webhooks configured, Stripe waits one hour after creation to finalize the invoice.

If your invoice is configured to be billed by sending an email, then based on your email settings, Stripe will email the invoice to your customer and await payment. These emails can contain a link to a hosted page to pay the invoice.

Stripe applies any customer credit on the account before determining the amount due for the invoice (i.e., the amount that will be actually charged). If the amount due for the invoice is less than Stripe’s minimum allowed charge per currency, the invoice is automatically marked paid, and we add the amount due to the customer’s credit balance which is applied to the next invoice.

More details on the customer’s credit balance are here.

Related guide: Send invoices to customers

Endpoints