Affiliate offers and cashback

Affiliate offers let your customers earn rewards on purchases made directly with more than 4,000 online brands. Spendstream works with nine affiliate networks.

How affiliate offers work

1. Your customer clicks a tracked link and lands on the retailer’s site.
2. They buy directly from the retailer. No payment passes through Spendstream.
3. The affiliate network reports the sale to Spendstream with the commission earned.
4. Spendstream records a transaction and shares the commission according to your configured split.
5. Spendstream sends a TRANSACTION_UPDATED webhook each time the transaction changes.

 
flowchart TD
    A[Get token] --> B[Add or find user]
    B --> C[List offers with getCashback]
    C --> D[Customer clicks tracked link]
    D --> E[Customer buys from retailer]
    E --> F[Network reports the sale]
    F --> G[Transaction is pending]
    G --> H{Network decision}
    H -->|Approved| I[Transaction approved]
    H -->|Declined| J[Transaction declined]
    I --> K[TRANSACTION_UPDATED webhook]
    J --> K

Transaction states

Affiliate transactions are not confirmed immediately. They can be pending, approved, declined or amended, and the network may change them weeks after the purchase. Design your interface so that a pending amount is clearly labelled as provisional.

Commission split

Commission is shared according to the commercial terms agreed with you. The offer catalogue shows the customer-facing rates. Confirm how the terms apply to your account with Spendstream.

Key points to get right

1. Use webhooks as the source of truth. Do not treat a customer returning to your site as a confirmed sale.
2. Reconcile regularly. No retry mechanism exists for webhooks today, so run a periodic reconciliation with getTransactionsList.
3. Do not hard-code offers. Availability and rates change, so refresh the catalogue often.
4. Keep users identified. Attribution depends on the user identifier you registered with addNewUser.

Related pages

• Cashback resource guide
• Transactions resource guide
• Brands resource guide
• Categories resource guide