PayPal Affiliate Program Integration
Pay every partner through PayPal.
Connect your PayPal account to Referly to automatically pay out your affiliates
This is a payout rail, not a tracking integration. Connect Stripe, Shopify or another platform for the tracking.
14-day free trial · No credit card required · Cancel anytime
What it does
4 steps to connect, none of which need a developer.
Overview
Referly and PayPal
Connect your PayPal account to Referly to automatically pay out your affiliates
Running more than one platform? They all feed one ledger, so partners get a single link, a single balance and a single payout.
What connects
What PayPal does
Fourteen things, each one read from what PayPal reports rather than from a feature list. The two chips below are the short answer.
What it does
- YesConnects without a developer — The connection is an app install or a plugin, so nothing has to be added to your checkout by hand.
- YesConnect from the dashboard — You authorise the connection from inside Referly. There is nothing to configure on the other side afterwards.
- YesPays partners through it — Money actually leaves through this platform. Referly hands it the batch, and it moves the funds to each partner.
- YesPays everyone in one batch — One approval sends every partner what they are owed, rather than one transfer at a time.
What it does not, or only sometimes
- NoReferral trackingThis is a payout rail, not a tracking integration. Connect a payment platform for the tracking.
- NoSale trackingNothing is tracked here. This is where money leaves once a commission has been earned.
- NoRecurring commissions on renewals — Renewals arrive as their own payments, so a partner can be paid for a set number of payments, a set number of months, or for the life of the customer.
- NoRefunds reverse the commission — A refund reverses the commission it earned, so a partner is not paid for revenue you gave back.
- NoCoupon-code attribution — A customer who types a partner's discount code at checkout is attributed to that partner, with no link click and no cookie involved.
- NoA discount code per partner — Referly creates the discount code inside your platform when a partner joins, so you never mint codes by hand.
- NoPer-product commission rules — Referly reads your product catalogue, so a rule can pay one rate on one product and a different rate on another.
- NoCollection-level rules — Target a whole collection instead of listing its products one by one, and new products in that collection inherit the rate.
- NoCommission net of tax — Tax is subtracted before the commission is calculated, so you are not paying a percentage of money that belongs to a tax authority. On by default, and switchable.
- NoCommission net of shipping — Shipping is subtracted before the commission is calculated. On by default, and switchable.
- NoPay partners in store credit — Instead of cash, a partner's balance can be issued as credit inside the platform they already shop in.
- NoCarries your own click id — An `rsubID` on the inbound link travels all the way to the sale, so an ad platform or a network can match the conversion back to its own click.
- NoSyncs partners into a list — Partners are added to a named list or group in your email platform as they join, so onboarding and announcements go out from the tool you already write in.
Setup
Connect PayPal in four steps
Four steps, in order. The honest note underneath says which of them need someone technical and what the connection does not do.
- 1
Connect PayPal from your dashboard
Authorise your PayPal business account so Referly can create payout batches.
- 2
Set your payout terms
Choose the holding period, the minimum balance and how often payouts run.
- 3
Ask partners for their PayPal email
They add it once in the partner portal.
- 4
Approve the batch
One approval sends every partner what they are owed.
PayPal is a payout rail, not a tracking integration: it moves money, it does not record sales. Connect a payment platform for the tracking. A batch can be declined if the funding account is short, and Referly surfaces the reason rather than silently retrying.
Guides
Step-by-step for PayPal
Written for the setup you actually have, not the one that makes the shortest article.
Customer stories
What a program on Referly looks like
Three businesses, three different stacks, and the numbers their partners produced.

“We have been running affiliate programs for over a decade, and ours is one of the biggest parts of how OptimizePress grows. Referly is the first platform where an operation with thousands of partners actually feels manageable, from recruiting new affiliates to tracking every sale they send.”

James Dyson
Founder & CEO, OptimizePress
- 7 figures
- in affiliate-driven sales
- 4,554
- active affiliates
- 10,536
- referrals

“This platform is quite simple and easy to use, and you can start attracting people to your affiliate program very quickly. A big plus is that the founder, Ayo, is super responsive.”

Ilfat Khayrullin
CMO & Co-founder, Letterly
- 300K+
- app users
- 689
- active affiliates
- 24,114
- clicks tracked
“Affiliates drive a serious share of our revenue across three countries. Since we moved to Referly everything runs from one place, tracking has been spot on, and our partners get paid without me chasing spreadsheets.”

Alexander Koppers
Affiliate Manager, Moov
$6.9M
in total affiliate-driven revenue
- 1,154
- active affiliates
- 19,017
- affiliate sales
- 1,240,030
- clicks tracked
FAQ
Before you connect anything
The questions founders ask in the first ten minutes.
14-day free trial · No credit card required · Cancel anytime
Neither, and it is not meant to. PayPal is where money leaves once a commission has been earned. Connect a payment platform for the tracking.