Payouts
Non-custodial payouts from your own account: eligibility, batching, PayPal and Wise, the manual rails, and tax forms.
Payouts on AffiliateRail are non-custodial: your own PayPal Business or Wise Business account pays your partners directly. We compute who is owed what, batch it, and instruct your account with your own credentials. The money moves from you to your partner and never passes through us, we charge nothing on it, and because we never hold your partners' money, they never do identity verification with us. You are the payer of record, which also means tax paperwork stays yours; the tax forms section covers what we collect for you.
From commission to payout
- A commission is earned and, once approved, waits out the holding period (14 days by default): your refund buffer.
- Matured commissions become due. When a month closes, everything due nets into one payout per partner per currency. Clawbacks from refunds net against positives first; a partner whose net is zero or below simply carries the balance forward.
- The payout goes out on your NET term: NET-15 means commissions earned in a month are paid 15 days after it ends. NET-30 and NET-60 are the other options.
Batches are idempotent: a payout run can be retried without ever paying anyone twice.
Eligibility
A partner who cannot be paid is never silently dropped. The payout row is created as Not eligible, with the reason, visible to you and to them:
| Reason | What it means |
|---|---|
| Partner is not active | Their balance is held until they are reinstated |
| No payout method on file | They need to add one in their portal |
| Their method is not one this program pays by | The row names the accepted methods |
| Tax form not submitted | Your program requires one before any payout |
| Balance below the minimum | It rolls into the next payout |
Most of these are the partner's to fix, and the row lets you nudge them in one click.
The rails
PayPal and Wise are the automated rails. Connect either under Payouts, Connect PayPal or Wise:
- PayPal: partners are paid to their PayPal email from your PayPal Business balance. Needs Payouts enabled on the account. The PayPal guide walks the whole setup, including the sandbox rehearsal.
- Wise: partners are paid into their bank account from your Wise Business balance, in their own currency. Needs a full-access API token. The Wise guide covers it, including the per-transfer approval rules that apply to UK and EEA businesses.
Credentials are encrypted, never redisplayed, and disconnecting stops future payouts immediately. After connecting, both rails offer a small test payout so you can watch one land before a real batch goes.
Bank transfer, wire and crypto are deliberately manual: export a batch as CSV from the Payouts page (PayPal-format, Wise-format or generic), pay it from your own bank or wallet, and mark it paid. Manual CSV export is on every tier and is also the fallback if you would rather not connect a rail at all.
Automatic payouts (Grow and above) send each batch on its NET date without you pressing anything, once a rail is connected and verified. Without it, you review and send each batch by hand.
When a payout fails
Rails fail asynchronously, so a payout is never marked paid just because the rail accepted the request. A failed payout lands on the Failed tab with the rail's reason, you get one email, and the partner is told nothing is lost and nothing is theirs to do. Fix the cause (an underfunded balance is the usual one) and send the batch again; it goes out under a fresh reference so the rail cannot mistake it for the refused attempt.
Tax forms
Tax form collection is part of the Grow plan and above. If you switch require tax forms on, partners complete a W-9 (US persons) or W-8BEN / W-8BEN-E (everyone else) in their portal before they can be paid. Forms are collected, encrypted and stored for you as the payer of record, and exported as CSV or PDF from Tax forms in the dashboard when you or your accountant file. We never file for you, and the forms themselves never travel over the API: the API exposes each partner's status only.