Stripe Affiliate Program - Stripe Partnerships & How It Works

Stripe is one of the world's most popular payment processors on the web right now, serving millions of businesses in over 120 countries including some big-name brands.

Stripe also has a huge partner program that allows businesses to connect and scale their operations using fellow entrepreneur’s products, tools, and services. For example, if you have a blog and then decide to sell some products on it, you could use a WooCommerce plugin which is powered by Stripe to process your payments.

Some members of the partner program also allow you to create your own affiliate program powered by Stripe so you can generate new leads for your business.

Does Stripe Have an Affiliate Program?

Stripe doesn’t have a conventional affiliate program but it is a very useful tool for any business owner that processes payments online making it the perfect complimentary service to recommend to your readers if you’re recommending another financial product like the Wise multi-currency account. Such businesses will especially benefit if they trade internationally or just process payments in multiple currencies.

What does the Stripe Affiliate Program Pay?

As we mentioned, Stripe doesn’t currently offer a conventional affiliate marketing program. However, they do offer a ton of different resources and tools to help you integrate Stripe into your payments system. Also, with a bit of creative marketing, you can promote Stripe to your audience while earning affiliate commissions from similar partners like Wise.

If you are looking to promote a payment solution, take a look into the Wise affiliate program. Wise is a service that lets people send, spend and receive money from abroad. It can easily be integrated with Stripe to receive money (especially in non-local currencies) and save on the conversion fees!

How Does Stripe Work?

Stripe is a payment processing platform that allows businesses like yourself to accept and process debit/credit card payments from customers all across the globe. The platform launched in 2010 and is currently used by some of the biggest brands in the world including Deliveroo, Spotify, Uber, and Google.

What Products do they Offer?

Usually, when a consumer makes an online purchase, the business selling the product or service needs to use both a payment gateway and a payment processor to securely capture and process the customer’s funds. In the past, these were two separate entities working together, but with Stripe, they take care of both, describing themselves as the “complete payments platform” and saving money in the process.

The great thing about Stripe is that it supports 135 currencies meaning that you can sell products or services in multiple countries using their local currencies. If your currency is different from the customer’s currency, it’s not a problem, Stripe can convert payment amounts for you using mid-market rates meaning you don’t lose out on foreign exchange fees. Or, if you have local bank details for a select currency (which you can obtain through a Transferwise multi-currency account), you can just integrate it with Stripe and just receive the funds in that currency.

Stripe integrates with a bunch of payment methods including Apple Pay, G-Pay, Amex Checkout, Klarna, ACH, and more.

Who Can Use Stripe?

Stripe can be used by any sized business; large or small, but, depending on your size you may not need all of its features. It’s specifically useful for those with businesses on an international scale. If you are a developer or have a team of developers in the workplace, you may also be interested in joining the partner program to contribute plugins and extensions to the platform.

Where Can You Use Stripe?

Stripe is currently available in 39 countries including the UK, USA, Canada, and Australia, and can be used both online and in physical stores, thanks to the flexible developer tools and card readers used to process in-person transactions.

When recommending Stripe to your audience, you can find ways to earn revenue with other providers that compliment Stripes tools. For example, recommend that your readers use Wise or N26 to connect to their Stripe account and earn revenue with them.

What is the Stripe Partner Program?

The Stripe Partner Program is designed for three different types of partner:

Platform Partner – This is designed for individuals and businesses wanting to add payments to their platform allowing you to accept payments from your customers.

Extension Partner – This is designed for those who have a bit of a technical background and think of something that would be a great addition to the stripe platform to help assist businesses further.

Plugin Partner – Again for those with a tech background or developers, plugin partners can create plugins for sites such as WordPress or open-source platforms.

Stripe’s partner program is free to join, but they also have a paid option too for larger businesses that may need access to more features and benefits. It’s called the Stripe Verified Partner Program and the annual fee for this is $250.

Pros and Cons of Using Stripe for your Affiliate and Referral Marketing Needs

There are several pros and cons of joining the Stripe Partner Program. Let’s take a look at them to see if Stripe can meet your affiliate marketing needs.

Pros

• By joining Stripe, you gain access to a wealth of tools with state of the art documentation that will help you work with APIs, extensions and their payment processing system which you can easily integrate onto your website within seconds.

• If you become a Verified Partner, you’ll be showcased alongside hundreds of companies in the partner gallery which gets you noticed on a B2B level. It also allows you to connect with businesses should you need tools to help you scale your operations.

• Stripe regularly updates its features and product range, and, with existing partners contributing features to the system too, you’ll never be short of tools to help you skyrocket your business.

Cons

• Stripe isn’t really for those who want to create their own payments processing system. It’s rather for those who need a payment system and may be interested in adding features to it further down the line.

• Some users may find that the basic Stripe account doesn’t meet their needs, meaning that they have to shell out $250 per year. This could be considered a heavy cost, especially if your business is just starting out.

• Stripe doesn’t currently offer a revenue share program, meaning that if you’re looking to promote a payment processing affiliate program, the Stripe partner program isn’t for you.

So, as you can see, one of the major pitfalls of Stripe’s partner program is the lack of an affiliate program.

However, all is not lost.

You just need to be a little creative when promoting products instead. Many of Stripe’s partners have revenue share programs and, if you’re creating content to promote Stripe, you could consider promoting the use of the Wise multi-currency account alongside it. The account is currently available in over 80 countries and the affiliate program pays per each sale, with higher commission for referred businesses. Cookie lifespan is indefinite meaning there’s no time limit on your referrals. You’ll be saving your readers a ton of cash on foreign exchange fees when it’s time for them to withdraw their money from Stripe.

With Wise, when based in the UK, USA, Europe, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand, you can also get a Mastercard debit card that allows ATM withdrawals in local currencies at much more favorable rates than those offered with standard banks.

What Software Does Stripe Offer for Affiliate Programs

Stripe offers businesses a wide range of opportunities to create custom payment solutions through their partner program which integrates features and tools from many SaaS companies around the world.

In terms of affiliate programs, there are several partners that already work with Stripe that you can easily integrate within a few seconds. Rewardful, which is a software that allows businesses to set up their own affiliate programs in a few clicks; it also automatically tracks things like upgrades to packages, downgrades, and cancellations of subscriptions after free trials so affiliate commissions can be adjusted accordingly.

Linkmink is also another affiliate tracking software, that tracks your affiliate’s sales so that you only pay commissions when you’ve earned real revenue.

It’s worth keeping in mind that as an affiliate marketer, you’ll always be having to either pay your affiliates or receive your affiliate commissions in varying currencies and this is no different with Stripe. The good thing, however, is that Stripe integrates with Transferwise, meaning you can use local bank details for many of your currencies so you’re not paying excessive fees on foreign exchange when converting your revenue to your native currency – plus you also get the mid-market exchange rate. Once your money’s in your Wise account it’s up to you what you do with it. You can keep it in that currency, or convert it. Wise can also automatically convert your currency if you use your debit Mastercard to pay for something, and it’ll always use the currency that’s giving the best exchange rate at that moment.

Conclusion

Stripe is a versatile payment processing platform with countless opportunities for development. Although it would be nice to see them create a revenue share program in the future, there are ways now that you can still earn affiliate commissions whilst using Stripe by harnessing the power of some of their partners.

We highly recommend that if you’re using Stripe, or considering using it, to sign up to our multi-currency account as you could save hundreds, if not thousands, on foreign exchange fees compared to your standard business and current accounts. Plus, it will make your business run smoother. By allowing your customers to pay for things in their local currency, you’re making the transaction more seamless for them and once you’ve set up your local bank details with each currency, you can deposit money into your personal or business Wise account in just a few clicks. It’s a win-win for all parties.