How to Pay Affiliates

Learn how to pay affiliate commissions from Refersion, or record payments made outside the platform.

Andre Tan avatar
Written by Andre Tan
Updated this week

During setup, you may have established a payment method such as PayPal Payouts or Trolley.

You can also choose to make a gift card payment via email, or simply mark an Affiliate as Paid within Refersion if you’ve paid them via wire transfer, check, Venmo, or other manual payment method. Marking these affiliates as paid will ensure your reporting is accurate.

PayPal Payouts, Trolley & Gift Card Payments

Note: When making one-time or cumulative payouts of $1,000 or more within a 24-hour period via Paypal Payouts or Trolley, we will ask you to confirm your identity via Two-Factor Authentication.

1. Go to Payments > Approve Payments

2. Enter the Name/ID or Offer you’d like to pay out to. To display more search options, click Show Advanced Filtering (filter by the minimum amount owned, PayPal email, or conversion date range).

Note: You’ll see a PayPal logo displayed by affiliates who have provided their email for PayPal payment. Affiliates can add an email anytime from the Affiliate Dashboard, or, you can add it from Manage > Affiliates > (select Affiliate) > Offer & Payment.

Note: For Affiliates with multiple conversions, all conversions will be grouped within that record.

3. Select an Affiliate(s) record for payment, or check the box at the top to Select All.

Note: You can click on See conversions to view the specific order details.

4. Click Process Bulk Payments.

Note: The payment option you select on the following page will apply to all affiliates you’ve selected here.

5. Select your Payment Option, and follow the appropriate steps below:

Pay via PayPal Payouts

Click Send via PayPal Payouts or Send via PayPal Mass Payments (if you have Mass Payments enabled).

Affiliates will receive a notification via PayPal, and the affiliate will be marked as Paid in Refersion (see the new record on your Payment Status list).

Find out how to enable PayPal Payouts.

Pay via Trolley

Click Send via Trolley.

Note: Only Affiliates who’ve completed their Trolley profile will be eligible for this payment method.

You will see a processing status update for that Payment ID. Authorized users will receive an email from Trolley with a link to approve the payment.

Find out how to enable Trolley payments.

Note: If you would like to add an additional layer of approval (for larger payments or multiple user roles), you can set it up via your Trolley account:

From Trolley, go to Settings > Team > Approval Process. You can customize your approval workflow from there for all future payments.

When the authorized user approves the payment, the status of your payment inside Refersion will change to Completed.

Pay via Gift Card

  1. Click Send Gift Card.

  2. Enter a gift card code (created form your ecommerce platform).

  3. Click Process Payments and Email Gift Codes.

Once sent, your affiliate(s) will be marked as Paid.

If you're on Shopify Plus, then we can help you automate gift card payments to your affiliates! Please reach out to us for assistance with enabling this feature.

Pay Manually (outside of Refersion)

To pay an affiliate directly (via check, cash, donation, etc.), but keep your reporting accurate, you’ll need manually mark them as Paid:

Click Complete Payment Manually.

On the Payment Status page, the status should be Completed.

As long as their payment email is on in Refersion, affiliate(s) will also receive an email confirming the transaction.

Pay Affiliates Automatically Using Unified Payments

US-based businesses whose commissions are in USD can sign up for Unified Payments to take advantage of automated payments and tax management. Once your account and your affiliates are onboarded with Unified Payments, then you'll just need to make sure your bank account has sufficient funds each month on funding day. Other than that, you're all set! No manual action will be needed to pay your affiliates.

You can click here to learn more.

Did this answer your question?