Stripe and Cashier Help

I am getting somewhat confused by Cashier and Stripe and a lot out there seems to be contradictory and older.

I am using a table Customer so I have set the .env accordingly. The initial form for customer just gets their name, email, country and password and then goes to a controller method:

$cu = new Customer;

        $cu->name = $request->name;
        $cu->email = $request->email;
        $cu->country = $request->country;
        $cu->plan_id = 3;
        $cu->password = Hash::make($request->password);
        $cu->save();

        $cu->createAsStripeCustomer();


        //make the ID a session variable
        session(['customer' => $cu->id]);

        return redirect()->route('formStarterPayment',['id' => $cu->id, 'intent' => $cu->createSetupIntent()]);

The Stripe ID is recorded in the database.

Next is the payment page. I have a table of plans so I get the information at the start of the view and pass in the cost and the customer's email:

<form action="/subscriptionPayment" method="POST">
  @csrf
  <script
          src="https://checkout.stripe.com/checkout.js" class="stripe-button"
          data-key="{{ env('STRIPE_KEY') }}"
          data-amount="{{ $amount }}"
          data-name="{{ $pl->name }}"
          data-email="{{ $fs->email }}"
          data-currency="gbp">
        </script>
</form>

This is where confusion starts as I am trying to set up a subscription.

if I dd($request) I get

"stripeToken" => "tok_1FybOgF7aDMrgjaugPzXdejn"
      "stripeTokenType" => "card"
      "stripeEmail" =>appropriate email

so my function is

    $tokenType = $request->stripeTokenType;
    $email = $request->stripeEmail;

    $stripeToken = $request->stripeToken;

    $cu = Cust::find( session('customer') );
    $pl = Plan::find(3);

    $cu->createOrGetStripeCustomer();

    $amount = $pl->cost *100;

    $cu->stripeToken = $stripeToken;
    $cu->save();

    $paymentMethod = $cu->paymentMethods();
    $intent = $cu->createSetupIntent();

    $cu->newSubscription($pl->name, $pl->test_stripe_plan)
        ->trialDays($pl->freePeriod)
        ->create($stripeToken,
          ['email' => $email]);

This fails with an error message that there is no such payment method and then the token is given.

I am using Laravel 5.8 with the latest Cashier and obviously I have checked what is the database and it is fine.

I will be grateful for any help!