Unified Payments is Refersion's payment platform and provides a way for merchants and affiliates to build stronger relationships through consistent, transparent payment processing. Merchants are able to automate commission payments and tax management for their affiliate program, and affiliates are able to rely on a consistent, monthly payment from all approved commissions.

For merchants, Unified Payments provides an end-to-end system for automating commission payments to affiliates. For all approved conversions, monthly commission payments are automatically distributed to your affiliates, which will strengthen your relationship with your network and instill trust. Your program will also stand out to other affiliates and premium publishers who prefer to work with brands who offer Unified Payments. Unified Payments also collects tax forms from affiliates to automate 1099 distribution.

For affiliates, commissions earned for approved conversions from participating merchants will come on the same day of each month, deposited into their Unified Payments Wallet. This results in consistent and more reliable revenue streams. The Unified Payments Wallet also offers a single payout where payments from all merchants are combined (as opposed to receiving multiple different payments from multiple different merchants every month). This should make it easier for affiliates to track their performance across more merchants.

Unified Payments is available to all US-domiciled merchants with an active Refersion account, and to all publishers, affiliates and influencers registered within the Refersion Marketplace. Certain industries are restricted by our payments partner, Dots.

No, at this time Unified Payments only supports US dollar transactions.

Unified Payments is available to US-domiciled merchants; affiliates can be located globally (except in sanctioned countries) but will need to be paid in US Dollars.

Signing up for Unified Payments is free, but there are some associated transaction costs.

Merchants pay a transaction fee of 1% of the funding, capped at $6.00 per transaction, and will pay an annual fee of $5 for each affiliate that has earned $600 or more for the filing of a 1099 form.

The fee for affiliates depends on their location in the world. For affiliates located domestically in the US, they will pay a $1.00 payout fee when withdrawing funds from their Unified Payments Wallet.

For affiliates located internationally, they will pay a $1.00 + 3% of the withdrawal amount payout fee when withdrawing funds from their Unified Payments Wallet.

Unified Payments will generate and file a 1099 or an 1042-S form for each merchant that any affiliate earns more than $600 within the calendar year.

If a merchant has paid any affiliate outside of Unified Payments, either because they join Unified Payments later in the year, or because the merchant makes some payments outside of Unified Payments, then the amounts paid outside of Unified Payments can be added to Unified Payments to provide a consolidated tax reporting statement.

Yes. While we try to support as many businesses as possible, there are certain business categories that are not eligible to participate in Unified Payments. These include but are not limited to:

If you have questions about your business's eligibility, send an email to [email protected], and we'd be happy to chat.

A more in-depth glossary of relevant terms can be found here.

The summarized steps to get onboarded with Unified Payments as a merchant are as follows:

Using a service that transfers money for you is a carefully regulated business in the US, and the KYB is a verification standard that confirms the legal status of a company and its compliance with Anti-Money Laundering and other regulations. KYB procedures include ultimate beneficial ownership (or UBO) as a transparency mechanism. Establishing UBO allows revealing who is directly benefiting from the business profits. In essence, KYB makes it harder for criminals to disguise illegitimately obtained funds as income.

The process can take up to 2 weeks, but is frequently faster. After you submit your business information, it will be reviewed by our payment partner’s compliance team for verification and approval. Depending upon this review, you may be asked to submit additional documentation.

KYB checks require a diverse set of data including general business information such as your business's legal name , business address, and website URL. KYB also requires specific business details such as incorporation type, incorporation date, and Tax ID (EIN).

In addition, the process also asks for information about the individuals owning more than 25% of your company (referred to as UBOs or Ultimate Beneficial Owners). These individuals will be emailed and asked to upload a photo of their ID.

You’ll be able to use a Passport, Drivers License or other State issued ID.

We suggest having a director or another senior member of your company that has signing authority complete the KYB form.

Refersion will make a withdrawal from your bank account on the first Monday of every month to fund your Unified Payments Wallet.

Withdrawals from your Unified Payments Wallet will be made on the second Tuesday of the month, funding each affiliate's Unified Payments Wallet on that day.

A week prior to funding day, merchants will receive an email with the maximum possible funding amount. The maximum funding and the upcoming funding amount will be displayed to merchants on the Payments>Unified Payments Wallet tab at all times.

The maximum funding amount is determined by the value of all Approved or Pending conversions that:

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.
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The maximum funding amount also includes unpaid commissions earned by all affiliates, whether they are participating in Unified Payments or not.

The maximum funding amount helps ensure there are sufficient funds in your account on funding day. 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.

This $25 is an insufficient funds security deposit to cover any potential ACH failure fee that is assessed for failed transfers from the merchant’s bank account into the Unified Payments Wallet upon funding day.

You will receive an email notifying you of the funding failure and prompting you to verify that you have sufficient funds in your bank account in order to continue using Unified Payments. Your $25 insufficient funds security deposit will be utilized to cover the ACH failure fee, and a new $25 insufficient funds security deposit will be included in your subsequent funding day transfer.

In the event of a failed funding event, affiliates will be notified that they will not receive payments via Unified Payments for the month.

You’ll need to ensure your bank account has appropriate funds to attempt another withdrawal either next month on the next funding day, or you can reach out to our Customer Success team at [email protected] to facilitate a one-time off-cycle funding date.
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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: Refersion, Pantastic, Divisible, Dots, Dots Method or GrailPay.
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Please keep these company names in mind in the rare case that you need to manually approve the transaction with your bank.

Yes, Refersion will continue to support integrations with PayPal, Trolley, Shopify Automated gift cards (for select merchants), and Manual Gift cards.

Affiliates that have opted into Unified Payments will receive automated payments through Unified Payments; affiliates that do not sign up for Unified Payments will still be able to receive payment via other methods. This of course ensures that the appropriate payment method will still be available for any affiliates that are not paid in USD.

Funds will only be withdrawn from your bank account to pay for approved conversions, and cannot be returned to your bank account. In the case that excess funds are withdrawn from your bank account, then they will be used to pay for future conversions. For example, if your Unified Payments Wallet is funded as usual on the first Monday, but you then contact Refersion to un-approve a previously approved conversion before the payment is made on the following Tuesday.

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.

Yes. The amounts paid to affiliates outside of Unified Payments can be communicated to Dots before the end of the year, so the correct 1099 and 1042-S forms can be generated.

Services that transfer money are carefully regulated businesses in the US. KYC is the mandatory process of identifying and verifying a customer’s identity. Refersion must comply with KYC regulations and anti-money laundering regulations to limit fraud, and thus we must ensure that affiliates are genuinely who they claim to be.

You will need to verify your phone number and provide your legal name that matches your government issued ID. You’ll also need to provide tax information so that TIN matching can be done.

The process may take up to 1 week, but is frequently faster. After you submit your personal information, it will be reviewed by our payment partner’s compliance team for verification and approval. Depending upon this review, you may be asked to submit additional documentation.

When an affiliate signs up for Unified Payments, we set up a Unified Payments Wallet for that affiliate. Funds are deposited into their wallet on the second Tuesday of every month.

Affiliates are completely free to make withdrawals on their own schedule, although if you have a verified payout method connected and if you have funds sitting in your Unified Payments Wallet for 30 days after a merchant sends you a commission payment, then Dots will automatically transfer those funds from your Unified Payments Wallet to your preferred payout method.

Affiliates have several options for moving funds from their Unified Payments Wallet to their own, non-Refersion account. The options available will vary depending on the affiliate's region, but some common options are listed below:

Security is of the utmost importance to us! We partnered with Dots to handle the banking processes of Unified Payments, and they have comprehensive platform security. They offer advanced encryption, bank-level security, and OFAC compliance among other features. You can click here to review all the security measures that Dots offers.

For context, 1099-K, 1099-NEC, and 1099-MISC are forms sent to you (and to the IRS) reporting income you earned as a freelancer.

1099-K forms are usually sent out from a payment-processing entity (such as PayPal).

1099-NEC or 1099-MISC forms are sent out from people/companies who made payments to you. Companies are generally required to send you a 1099-NEC or 1099-MISC if they paid you at least $600. Affiliates will receive a different 1099-NEC form from each brand that paid them through Unified Payments.

If you would like to offboard from Refersion’s Unified Payments system, please reach out to [email protected].