Not all customers are individuals.  Some are businesses.  A normal customer includes a first name and a surname, but there needs to be a way to identify a business customer.  So to implement this, a new person record would be created and instead of checking the box for "customer" there would be a checkbox for "Business Customer" and this option would change the requirements of the person record such that they are more appropriate to a business customer.  This would need to be integrated to the API as well.  Currently, the API enforces a value in the first name column.  A customer without a first name, such as a business, must have a dummy value placed in the first name column in order for the API transactions to work.  Additionally, a business customer should be able to have a business portal account instead of an account for a named individual.