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How to process bulk affiliate payments in PayPal using a CSV
How to process bulk affiliate payments in PayPal using a CSV
Shakima avatar
Written by Shakima
Updated over a week ago

If you are unable to use the PayPal Payouts API integration to pay affiliates, there is another option available. Within your Paypal account, there is a Bulk Payouts option that enables you to payout up to 5,000 recipients in the same currency at once using a CSV. You can learn more about this feature here.

Important note: You must have PayPal payouts enabled in your PayPal account to use the bulk upload option.

In order to start paying affiliates via CSV, you’ll need a properly formatted CSV that PayPal will accept for the upload. To automate the CSV creation, we’ve created a templated report that can be configured to send to your team upon request or on a recurring basis.

The report is configured with the following columns:

  • Email/Phone - The affiliate’s Paypal email in Refersion. If this value is blank, the affiliate’s login email can be used instead (upon request).

  • Currency Code - The three-letter currency code of the commission due. If you have multiple currencies in the account, one report will be set up per currency.

  • Reference ID - The affiliate’s ID. You’ll need this later to go back into Refersion and manually mark affiliates as paid.

  • Note to recipient - A message stating what the payment is for

  • Recipient Wallet - Since we’re using the email address, the funds will be sent to their Paypal account. If you wish to push funds into Venmo, you’ll need to have a valid and properly formatted phone number on file for every affiliate.

  • Amount - The commission to be paid out.

Please reach out to our team to have this report set up for your account.

Once the report is set up, these are the steps you’ll need to follow in PayPal to process bulk payments.

Process bulk payments using a CSV in PayPal

From your PayPal dashboard, navigate to Pay & Get Paid > Payouts.

On this screen, upload your edited CSV. If you’d like, enter a subject line and message for the payment notification email to your affiliates. Lastly, check off the unclaimed money information box and click continue.

On the next screen, you’ll have a chance to review the total of all payouts, the number of recipients, and any associated fees:

Once you’ve confirmed everything looks good to go, click Send Payout and you should be all set.

You can verify payouts in your account by clicking View activity details or anytime in the future by going to the Activity link in the top navigation menu.

Once you’ve confirmed that everyone’s been paid in Paypal, you can use the same report to reference when reviewing Payments in Refersion. For every affiliate that was paid in Paypal, you’ll mark the affiliate’s commissions as paid in Refersion using the Manual Payment option. Manual payments won’t transfer any additional funds, it will just add a new payment record to denote the pending commissions are already paid so those pending payments don’t show up on a future report to be paid out.

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