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.

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PayPalby ReferlyIntegration

What it does

Referrals not trackedSales not trackedPayouts tracked

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.

Referrals not trackedSales not tracked

What it does

  • YesThe connection is an app install or a plugin, so nothing has to be added to your checkout by hand.
  • YesYou authorise the connection from inside Referly. There is nothing to configure on the other side afterwards.
  • YesMoney actually leaves through this platform. Referly hands it the batch, and it moves the funds to each partner.
  • YesOne approval sends every partner what they are owed, rather than one transfer at a time.

What it does not, or only sometimes

  • NoThis is a payout rail, not a tracking integration. Connect a payment platform for the tracking.
  • NoNothing is tracked here. This is where money leaves once a commission has been earned.
  • NoRenewals 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.
  • NoA refund reverses the commission it earned, so a partner is not paid for revenue you gave back.
  • NoA customer who types a partner's discount code at checkout is attributed to that partner, with no link click and no cookie involved.
  • NoReferly creates the discount code inside your platform when a partner joins, so you never mint codes by hand.
  • NoReferly reads your product catalogue, so a rule can pay one rate on one product and a different rate on another.
  • NoTarget a whole collection instead of listing its products one by one, and new products in that collection inherit the rate.
  • NoTax 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.
  • NoShipping is subtracted before the commission is calculated. On by default, and switchable.
  • NoInstead of cash, a partner's balance can be issued as credit inside the platform they already shop in.
  • NoAn `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.
  • NoPartners 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. 1

    Connect PayPal from your dashboard

    Authorise your PayPal business account so Referly can create payout batches.

  2. 2

    Set your payout terms

    Choose the holding period, the minimum balance and how often payouts run.

  3. 3

    Ask partners for their PayPal email

    They add it once in the partner portal.

  4. 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.

Read the PayPal setup docs

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.

OptimizePress
SaaSSite builder

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

James Dyson

Founder & CEO, OptimizePress

7 figures
in affiliate-driven sales
4,554
active affiliates
10,536
referrals
Letterly
Mobile appAI writing

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

Ilfat Khayrullin

CMO & Co-founder, Letterly

300K+
app users
689
active affiliates
24,114
clicks tracked
Moov
EcommerceFitness

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

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.

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  • 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.