Yes. You can reward affiliates with a share of revenue that your platform earns from usage fees, marketplace commissions, or similar charges.
Use the Conversion API when the amount you want to share is a fee your platform retains, rather than a standard payment made directly to your business.
How it works
- When a business joins through an affiliate, save its Affonso referral ID alongside the business or account ID in your system.
- When you have successfully earned a platform fee, send a conversion from
your backend. Set
sale_amountto the fee you retained, not to the customer's full payment amount. - Affonso matches the conversion to the saved referral and calculates the affiliate commission from your program's commission settings.
- If the fee is refunded or reversed, mirror that change with the Conversion Refund API.
For example, if a customer pays $100 and your platform retains a 5% fee, send a
conversion with a sale_amount of $5. If the affiliate earns 20% of that fee,
configure a 20% percentage commission. The affiliate then earns $1.
Example conversion
Send the conversion only after the underlying payment or fee is final in your
system. Use a stable fee or payment event ID as external_event_id so retries
do not create duplicate conversions.
{
"referral_id": "ref_123",
"external_event_id": "platform_fee_123",
"sale_amount": 5,
"sale_amount_currency": "USD",
"metadata": {
"source": "platform_fee",
"account_id": "account_123"
}
}Affonso calculates the commission automatically. Your backend only needs to send the retained fee and the identifier that links it to the referred account. Store the conversion ID returned by the API so you can use it for refunds and reconciliation later.
Stripe Connect platforms
For Stripe Connect, this pattern applies when your revenue is an application or platform fee collected from payments made for connected accounts. The standard Stripe integration tracks payments for the Stripe account connected to your Affonso program; it does not use the platform fee as a separate commissionable amount.
Keep the Affonso referral ID when the connected account is created or linked. Then, when your backend confirms the platform fee, send a conversion for that fee using the saved referral ID. Send a corresponding refund when the fee is returned to the connected account or customer.
