Unified Payments is an easy way for merchants to streamline payments and tax reporting for their affiliates. By enabling Unified Payments, you’ll strengthen your affiliate relationships — building trust and keeping them motivated to drive sales, so you can focus on growing your affiliate program.
Please note: Unified Payments is only available for US-domiciled merchants that pay affiliates in USD. Certain industries are restricted by our Payments Partner.
How it works
For all affiliates who have signed up to receive direct monthly payments through Unified Payments, their approved conversions will automatically be added to Unified Payments.
On the first Monday of each month, there will be a withdrawal from your bank account to fund your Unified Payments Wallet. This will be used to pay your affiliates for these approved conversions.
Each of your affiliates that have joined Unified Payments will also have their own Unified Payments Wallet. On the second Tuesday of the month, funds will be transferred from your Unified Payments Wallet into each specific affiliate's wallet.
During tax season, you and your affiliates will receive 1099’s for all payments made through Unified Payments.
Please note: We recommend setting up conversion auto-approval to streamline the process of paying affiliates. If you haven’t already enabled that on your Refersion account, then please click here to learn more. If you’d like help with activating this, then please reach out to [email protected].
Getting started
We’ve outlined the set up steps below. Once you’ve completed the onboarding, then you’ll be on your way to automating payments and managing tax information for your affiliates!
Enable two-factor authentication on your account.
Two-factor authentication provides an additional layer of security for your account, protecting you and your affiliates from an unauthorized user gaining access to sensitive account information. For the protection of your business and your affiliate's information, we highly recommend all businesses enable two-factor authentication before enrolling in Unified Payments. You can learn more about enabling two-factor authentication for your account here.
Sign up to use Unified Payments from the Account>Unified Payments tab.
To see if you’re eligible for Unified Payments, you’ll need to go through a pre-approval process. Mainly we have to check that you are not in a vertical that is ineligible to participate in Unified Payments (you can reference our FAQ for additional details including a list of banned verticals).
You can sign up for Unified Payments by going to the Account>Unified Payments tab of your Refersion account and clicking ‘Sign Up Here’.
We’ll notify you when you're eligible to continue the registration process!
Provide us a contact email address, agree to the Unified Payments Terms and Conditions, and acknowledge that $25 can be pulled from your linked bank account as a security deposit.
Once the Unified Payments feature is enabled on your account, you can return to the Account>Unified Payments tab. The contact email you provide will be used to send you all notification emails regarding Unified Payments and funding events. This security deposit is held within your Unified Payments Wallet to cover any potential fees related to failed transactions when transferring funds from your bank.
Submit compliance information for the KYB process and await approval.
From the Account>Unified Payments tab you will click the ‘Opt-In’ button to start the KYB process.
This is a form submitted to our partner Dots as a compliance check to verify your business. You can expect to submit the following:Company name, website, DBA (if applicable), and contact information.
Tax ID (EIN).
Incorporation type, state, and date.
Contact information and ownership percentage of all of your company's ultimate beneficial owners (UBOs). In the rare case that your business has no UBOs, then you can list one of your company’s directors instead.
A quick description of your business and your flow of funds.
We recommend a director or another senior member of your company that has signing authority complete the KYB form.
Once submitted, the verification process can take up to 2 weeks, but is frequently faster. You’ll receive an email notification once approved, letting you know it’s time to proceed to the next step.
Enter your banking information for payments.
Once your KYB form is verified, you’ll return to the Account>Unified Payments tab to enter the bank information where you’d like Refersion to withdraw the funds from to pay your affiliates. Once submitted, we will initiate the process of verifying your banking details and withdrawing the $25 security deposit. This may take up to 5 business days.
Please note: Depending on the automated fraud monitors set up at certain banking institutions, you may receive a transaction verification alert when Dots attempts to make a withdrawal from your bank account. The company name listed on this transaction may be one of the following: Divisible, Dots, Dots Method or GrailPay.
Please keep this in mind in the rare case that you need to manually approve the transaction with your bank.
That’s it! Once your banking information has been verified, you’re all set to start paying your affiliates who are onboarded with Unified Payments automatically. You’ll receive an email letting you know once everything has been verified.
Reviewing your Unified Payments settings
Once your banking information is approved, you’ll have access to the Payments>Unified Payments Wallet tab. On this page you’ll be able to review a few things:
Current Wallet Balance
This is the amount of funds that have been pulled from the merchant's bank account and are currently available in the merchant’s Unified Payments Wallet.
Upcoming Funding Amount
This is updated in real-time. The upcoming funding amount is determined by the value of commissions for all Approved conversions that:
Are generated by affiliates participating in Unified Payments.
Are not paid yet.
Occurred at least 30 days prior to the upcoming funding day (first Monday of every month)
Maximum Funding Amount
This is updated in real-time. The maximum funding amount is determined by the value of all Pending and Approved conversions that:
Are not paid yet.
Have existed for a minimum of 30 days on the next funding day (first Monday of every month)
The upcoming funding amount may be lower than the maximum funding amount because the actual funding amount will include only commissions for conversions that are Approved, not Pending. For example, if you have pending conversions that are 30 days old but then you deny those conversions, then commission would no longer be owed and funds would not need to be withdrawn from your bank for these newly denied conversions.
The maximum funding amount also includes unpaid commissions earned by all affiliates, whether they are participating in Unified Payments or not.
The upcoming and maximum funding amounts are for you (the merchant) to reference. You should use this to ensure that there are sufficient funds in your bank account on funding day, and you should ensure that at least 5 business days in advance. Please note that a $25 fee will be charged if your bank account lacks sufficient funds to cover the actual funding amount, or in the event of errors processing transactions stemming from issues with your bank.
Funding Events
This is a list of all past Unified Payments funding events on your account. There are columns that show the date of the funding event, the unique funding event ID, the number of conversions that were paid for, the total dollar amount of funds pulled from your bank, and the status of the funding event.
Hold Funding
If for some reason you need to skip a funding event you can choose to hold funding for 1 payment cycle (1 month).
By clicking the Hold Funding toggle, you will see a popup where you must confirm the following:
You are sure that you want to hold funding for this payment cycle (we will not attempt to withdraw funds from your bank for this month).
Your affiliates will NOT be paid this month through Unified Payments.
Your affiliates will be notified that their payment through Unified Payments has been delayed.
Funding will resume again next month.
Any commission not paid during this funding cycle will be included in the next funding cycle.
Update My Bank Account
Should you (as a merchant) ever need to change the bank account that your company is using for Unified Payments, then you can do that by returning to the Account>Unified Payments tab of your account and clicking the 'Update my bank account' button at the bottom of the page.
Please note: The option to update your bank account will only be available to you once the initial $25 security/insufficient funds deposit has been processed successfully.