#lucas-subscription-
spare kiln
Invoices are built on top of Payment Intents, so you can't really have invoices without them. I can't say for sure what TaxJar requires in terms of object usage, but I can say that all our Tax products are also built on top of Invoices, so it would not surprise me if they're the only supported objects.
hallow estuary
I see, thanks for that. On their page here https://developers.taxjar.com/integrations/guides/stripe/ they note that Invoices are supported and PaymentIntents are not, so yeah I suppose this may force our hand to switch to that before we launch. Is there a good page in your documentation to read that delineates the differences between the two? Do invoices just build on top of PaymentIntent - giving the ability to host an invoice that you can send to a customer to collect payment? Is there more?
spare kiln
Yeah, so invoices use Payment Intents under the hood to transition through the lifecycle of a payment. There are a lot of nuances to the two, but mostly it comes down to: Payment Intents handle the lifecycle of the charge creation and authentication, whereas invoices handle the lifecycle of payment with a customer.
There aren't any docs that contrast the two, since one is embedded in the other. Invoices allow you to send an actual invoice pdf for payment and kind of expand on what payment intents already do
Not sure if that adequately answers your question, but feel free to reply with more if I can help clarify
hallow estuary
Super helpful. I'm a little confused still about how you boiled it down, but I'm reading that as - Payment Intents operate at a lower level, "closer to the metal" with charges and authentication, where Invoices attach themselves to Customers and do a lot of the standard/boilerplate-y Payment Intent legwork for you? Invoices must assume certain standard defaults when creating Payment Intents?
spare kiln
Yeah, that's a pretty good abstraction. Invoices kind of allow you to interact with the customer and their associated payment with a little more flexibility, whereas the payment intent just manages the lifecycle of the charge itself. Additionally, invoices allow for grouping multiple payments as line items, so that payments can be aggregated and charged once.
With invoices you can redirect customers to a portal for payment, email them invoice pdfs, track a specific customer balance, and generally customize the whole process, as well