Payment methods
In this blog post we will talk about the various payment methods you can use to pay your affiliates in Affiliatly.
We currently offer six different payment methods: PayPal, Bank Transfer (SWIFT), cheque, gift card, bitcoin and Google Wallet. You can choose which one(s) you want to make available to your affiliates in the Settings page of your Affiliatly admin panel. Your affiliates can choose their preferred payment method in their panels from the options you have enabled.
PayPal
You can pay your affiliates via PayPal in two different ways – individually or using PayPal RESTful API.
To pay a particular affiliate, you need to go to the Affiliates page in your panel, find the affiliate and click the cogwheel on the right. In the details window, go to the tab Earnings, enter the sum in the “Amount to be paid via Paypal” field and click the “Pay the affiliate” button. You will be taken to PayPal’s website where you can complete the payment. After that you need to go back to the Earnings tab and enter the paid sum in the field "Mark sum as paid” and click on the "Save the marked sum" button. Doing this will deduct that amount from the affiliate's unpaid earnings in the Affiliatly database.
In order to pay using PayPal RESTful API, your PayPal account must be cleared from Paypal to be able to make payouts via the API and set it in Affiliatly from Settings > Payments > "Paypal API" (on that page you will find tutorial how to do that). Then you will be able to make a payment by clicking on “Make payments” in the Affiliates page. You can choose the affiliates you wish to pay and change the payout sum if necessary. Using this method will automatically mark the amount as paid in the Affiliatly database.
Bank Transfer
Another option for paying your affiliates is via bank transfer. When an affiliate chooses this payment option they need to provide their bank account information on their profile page in their panel. When they reach the payout sum, you need to make the transfer manually from your bank account. After the transfer is made, you must open the details window of the affiliate by clicking the cogwheel in the rightmost column and go to the "Earnings" tab. There you should enter the amount you have paid your affiliate in the "Mark sum as paid" field and you can also add a comment for the payment (e.g., "March Commission"). Finally, click the button "Save the marked sum". Doing this will deduct the amount from the affiliate's unpaid earnings in the Affiliatly database.
Gift Card
Gift cards for your shop are another available method of payment. You can set it up from Settings > Payment > Gift Cards. There you should enter the codes for the gift cards (note that you need to create them in your shop first) and you can enable the automatic sending of gift cards when the payout sum is reached by an affiliate. You can also specify the text of the email your affiliates will receive.
Online Store Credit
This payment option is for BigCommerce stores, as they do not support gift cards.
If you choose to use it, your affiliates will be asked to provide a customer email. When you want to make a payment, you need to set the credit in your BigCommerce panel (you can refer to this tutorial: https://support.bigcommerce.com/articles/Public/Giving-Customers-a-Store-Credit), manually send an email to your affiliate to inform them of the payment and then mark the sum as paid in Affiliatly. To do this, go to the Affiliates page, click the cogwheel in the table, go to the Earnings tab, enter the sum you paid in the “Paid sum” field under “Manually mark sum as paid”. Finally, click the “Save the marked sum” button. This will deduct the sum from the affiliate’s unpaid earnings.
Cheque, bitcoin and Google Wallet
These payment methods are not handled by the Affiliatly app itself and payment must be done manually. It is important to note that after payment using these methods you need to mark the sum as paid the same way as with the bank transfer method.