Help Migrating from SIM to CIM/Form with Recurring

[MalcolmEnt1]

I coded a SIM solution over 10 years ago, and it's been working fine for many clients.  But I now need to add recurring charge capability.  I desperately want to avoid any PCI requirements, i.e.  I never want to see cc#s.

I think I see the solution after digging through the API doc.  But I'm having trouble with the big-picture flow.  Please bear with me on this. I have many years of career coding experience.  But I need a bit of clarification and validation to make sure I am correct in my understanding of how all the piece-parts fit in the overall process.

The first thing I need is to validate that I can indeed do what I want to do, which is:

1. Create a customer account in Authorize.net using the API (without knowing the cc number)
2. Use an Authorize.net hosted form to capture and store the cc#, etc. for my customer where I never see the cc#.
3. Use the Authorize.net API as needed periodically (using my own scheduler) to request a charge transaction on that customer's credit card?

Assuming the above is possible, which from what I can tell, it apparently is.... I don't understand the 'createCustomerProfileRequest'.  It says the cc# is 'required' for that API.  But it says I have to call that API to get a profileId to be used to submit the form to capture the cc# (???).  Is it actually ok to submit the createCustomerProfileRequest API without a cc#?  Or am I totally missing something here?

Once I get past that hurdle above, can you verify my understanding that now I can simply issue a charge on that profile at any time using the API?

How close am I to correct? Again, I'm a professional code developer.  So we can talk as technical as necessary.

Thanks so much for any info you can provide.

Jerry

[MalcolmEnt1]

Thanks to Aaron and others on this forum, I finally got everything resolved.  I need to post the resolution for anyone else that is heading down my same trail.

The subject if this thread is migrating from SIM to CIM which is relevant to my problem.  If you are not a current or former user of SIM, you might not encounter this problem.  But if you currently have SIM in use, you need to know this.  On the settings page for the SIM payment form there is a field to specify that Card Code is required.  Believe it or not, the CIM api checks that field, even though it is set on a form that should have absolute no bearing on the CIM API.  In any case, if you have Card Code REQUIRED checked on your old SIM payment form setting page, you aren't going anywhere when trying to make a payment using the CIM API.  Uncheck that field on the SIM settings, (i.e. Card Code NOT required) and life will get much better.

Thanks to everyone for all of your help.  Still have a few minor issues that I may need a bit of help on.  But for today, the main path is all working now.

Jerry