At my website, I maintain my own profiles for my registered users, which contains names, address and all that without any credit card or bank data.
In creating a customer profile with CIM, the only data that is separate from a payment profile (other than a description and internal ID) is the customer's email address, so creating a generic profile for a new member is fairly easy but contains no real info that is of use int eh payment process.
What I would like to do is to save the member's name, address, phone umber and all that within CIM, but I need to do this before they have purchased anything (updating it every time they edit their profile?). Then, when the user actually wants to buy something, I would show that payment profile and if the user did not previously enter their credit card info, they could do it then.
The problem is that in setting up a payment profile for a customer, CIM requires me to submit payment info, which seems crazy. Why does the customer table at CIM not save default name and address data and when I need my member to enter a credit card to buy something, it pre-populates the payment profile wth the data i already have for the member?
The other alternative is for me not to try to create a paymetn profile until the member wants to buy something, but I cannot find a way to pre-populate the new profile when I call the HostedProfilePageRequest. It makes no sense for my members to have to enter address info I already have on file.
What is the best way to be able to take profile info I already have at my site and fill in those fields when I first create a payment profile for my customers?