Deleting Customers

Soft delete

Deleting a customer is a soft delete — the record is marked as deleted and removed from the customer list, but the underlying data is retained. This preserves payment history and accounting records.

Prerequisites

Close or cancel all active payment plans before deleting a customer. A customer with active plans cannot be deleted — the deletion will be blocked with a validation error.

Check the customer’s Payment Plans tab and close any open plans before proceeding.

Effect

After deletion:

• The customer no longer appears in the customer list or search results
• API calls using the customer’s cus_xxx ID return 404
• The customer cannot be recovered via the dashboard

Data retention

Payment history, payment intents, and transaction records associated with the customer are retained for accounting and compliance purposes. This data remains accessible in account reporting even after the customer is deleted.

Tip

To stop charging a customer without deleting them, act on their payment plans from each plan’s detail page. Suspend stops collecting until you resume it, and payments due meanwhile are skipped. Close ends it. The customer stays in your list with their history. Customer status can’t be changed, and doesn’t stop payments.