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Does Paypal have a merchant referral program?

Dave, I've been happily using Paypal as a merchant account and shopping system for years now, and would like to turn on a few of my colleagues to this fast and simple system. If possible, I'd like to get some sort of commission or referral bonus. Does Paypal offer such a thing?

Dave's Answer:

Paypal has what they call their Merchant Referral Bonus program which is what you're talking about. It's a bit hard to find, but you need to log in to your Paypal merchant account and click on the Merchant Tools tab.

On the top right of that screen, there's a link for Merchant Referral Bonus called "learn more". Click on that and you'll be presented with a URL that you can then encourage your colleagues to click on when they go to sign up for their own Paypal merchant account.

By way of example, my link is https://www.paypal.com/us/mrb/pal=BWVS9V5HS79XJ and if you click on it and sign up for a merchant account, I'll receive a bonus (thank you very much!)

The terms of the bonus aren't that great because they're based on the performance of the merchant over the subsequent 12 months: if your colleagues are only going to selling the occasional eBay auction item, don't expect to see much more than the cost of a beverage at Starbucks. Since I just signed up a colleague for Paypal, I can share the letter from Paypal that details exactly how the referral program works:

Thank you for referring A Merchant, Inc. to PayPal. Because A Merchant, Inc. just signed up for a Premier or Business PayPal account, you are now eligible to receive a Merchant Referral Bonus.

Here's how it works:

As soon as A Merchant, Inc. has used PayPal to receive a total of $200.00 USD in payments, you will receive your initial bonus of $1.00 USD, which will be deposited directly into your PayPal account.

In addition, once you've received your initial bonus, you will receive a residual payout based on the total amount of A Merchant, Inc.'s PayPal payments for 12 months after A Merchant, Inc.'s initial PayPal account creation.

PayPal encourages you to assist the new merchant get started with their account so you can get your money faster!

I guess my overall comment is if you think of this as "money for nothing" then it can be a pretty good deal, but for most merchants, the commission from a referral is going to be pretty paltry indeed.

Maybe you should just give them my referral link instead? :-)

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Comments

You seem to know how this whole thing works; could you send me a bit of information on the CGI you use to collect the information from this form?

Posted by: Anthony at October 13, 2006 7:54 AM

I have a lot to say, but ...

I have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but most of all I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a chai!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!