Valid questions and feedback, thanks for sharing! I think there is some confusion here (and maybe therefore something we can better communicate in our docs) about the scope of the Customers API and Customer Card endpoints. The Customers API is intended to be lean customer resource ‘primitive’ enabling you to sync customer profiles btw. Square Customer Directory (https://squareup.com/us/en/point-of-sale/features/customer-directory) and third party applications and systems. This is typically used to sync data in and out of Square’s CRM to power customer programs across channels (analytics, marketing, loyalty, personalization, etc.) either using Square first party tools (e.g. Square Marketing, Loyalty) or third party tools (data warehouse, marketing, CRM, etc.), or both. These use cases don’t generally require or have a log-in/auth component on top.
The Customer Card endpoints then enable linking a customer record to a card for repeat use. However, the Cards functionality here in these endpoints is not intended to solve for auth and log-in. For that, I believe you could either (1) Use Square Online Store (2) use a 3rd party plug in or integrated e-com platform from the partner App Marketplace (https://squareup.com/us/en/app-marketplace) to help power parts (or all) of the e-com flow , or (3) you could build this custom as we’re discussing here on top of the Square APIs. More info and comparison on those approaches can be found here: https://squareup.com/us/en/ecommerce?solution=ecommerce-payments-api. In other words, Customers API and the Customer Card endpoints are intended to be flexible lean components that can then be built on and integrated into e-com and other experiences using any of these various approaches. I should have suggested these other approaches in my initial reply, apologies for that!
@sjosey or @Bryan-Square – does that sound right to you, anything you’d add? what would you recommend here given the need that is being solved for and the context that they are a small business with limited budget? Is there an App Marketplace plug-in you’d suggest? Or is there API or SDK utilities I’m not aware of that Square provides that could help here?
cc @keenan-square @heisel-square for visibility and any further input as well