Free month rewards
Run a refer-a-friend campaign on Stripe where the referrer gets a free month of your product as credit on their Stripe customer balance instead of a cash payout.
A free month reward turns a campaign into a refer-a-friend program for your own customers. A customer shares their link, a friend becomes a paying customer, and the referrer gets credit on their Stripe customer balance. The credit comes off their next invoice automatically. Nobody needs a payout method, a bank connection or a tax form.
Free month rewards run on Stripe only, through the Rekomi app for Stripe, and are available on the Starter plan and above.
How it works
- You set a campaign's reward to Free month on your product instead of a cash commission.
- Your customers join the campaign's signup page and share their referral link (or a coupon code).
- When a referred friend pays their first invoice, Rekomi records the sale as usual and works out the referrer's credit.
- Rekomi finds the referrer on your Stripe account by email, sizes the credit from their own plan, and posts a negative balance transaction on your Stripe account. Stripe applies it to the referrer's next invoice.
- The referrer gets an email that their free month landed. You see every credit on the Conversions page.
One credit per new paying friend. Renewals of the friend's subscription never mint a second credit, and a friend who cancels and comes back later does not either.
Setting it up
On the campaign form, under Commission, keep Sales selected and choose the Reward:
- Cash commission is a normal affiliate campaign.
- Free month on your product is the refer-a-friend reward.
A free month campaign pays for sales only; the Leads and Clicks cards switch off. The commission length is fixed at one credit per new paying friend.
You then choose how the credit is sized:
- One month of their current plan (the default). Rekomi reads the referrer's active Stripe subscription and credits one month of its list price. A yearly plan counts as one twelfth. Metered or tiered prices fall back to the referrer's last paid invoice.
- What their friend paid on the first invoice. The friend's first payment, before tax, in the friend's currency.
- A fixed amount. The same credit for every referral, in your home currency.
Two optional settings sit beside that choice. Cap per referral limits what one referral can credit, whatever plan the referrer is on. Hold each credit for my approval keeps every credit on the Conversions page until you approve it; off means it posts to Stripe the moment the friend's first invoice is paid.
What you need
- The Rekomi app for Stripe installed from the Stripe App Marketplace by your Stripe account owner. The credit is applied on your own Stripe account, so this connection is what posts it. Accepting the app's permissions in the Stripe dashboard is not enough on its own; the marketplace install completes the connection.
- A way for the friend's payment to attribute to the referrer. The lightest path is the Rekomi head script on your site with its email capture on, which records the friend's email at signup so their first invoice matches. A per-referrer coupon code works with no code at all. Developers can stamp
rekomi_affiliate_idon the subscription instead. - The Starter plan or above. Trials count.
Where the referrer's credit goes
Rekomi looks for the referrer on your Stripe account in this order: a Stripe customer already known from their own past purchase through Rekomi, then a customer whose email matches the email they joined the campaign with (or the email on their Rekomi account). When several customers match, the one with an active subscription wins, then the newest.
If no customer matches, the credit waits as Needs attention and Rekomi retries daily for a week. The referrer gets one email asking them to make sure their account with you uses the same email. On the sale's page you can Pick customer from the matches, paste a customer id, or cancel the credit.
The credit is always posted in the referrer's own Stripe settlement currency. A fixed amount in a different currency waits as Needs attention with the reason.
Refunds
A full refund of the friend's first payment reverses the credit with a positive balance transaction on the referrer's customer. If the referrer already used the credit, Stripe adds the difference to their next invoice. Partial refunds leave the credit alone. A credit that had not posted yet is canceled instead.
What you see
- Conversions lists every sale on a free month campaign with a Free month pill and the credit's status: Pending, Awaiting approval, Applied, Needs attention, Canceled, Reversing or Reversed. The sale's page shows the referrer's Stripe customer, the balance transaction, the reason when something needs you, and the actions: Approve, Retry now, Pick customer, Cancel credit.
- Campaign overview shows how many free months the campaign has given and how many are waiting on you.
- Payouts does not change. Credit rewards never enter a payout run, never count toward the 3% on payouts, and never appear on a 1099.
- The Free month rewards email row under Settings, Emails covers the three notices to referrers: the credit landed, the account could not be matched by email, the credit was reversed.
What the referrer sees
The campaign page reads "You get one month free for every friend who becomes a paying customer", with Free months earned and Pending credits in place of the money tiles. Their conversions ledger shows each referral as a free month with its status. Someone whose every campaign rewards with a free month never sees payout setup, payout reminders or tax form prompts.
What it never does
- It never moves money through Rekomi. The credit is your own money on your own Stripe account.
- It never pays a cash commission on a free month campaign. Partner groups, performance tiers, per-affiliate rates, coupon splits, per-product rates and assigned partners do not apply there. Run a separate campaign for outside affiliates who should earn cash.
- It never credits a self-referral. A friend whose email is the referrer's own, or whose Stripe customer is the referrer's own, records the sale with no credit.
- It never posts a credit for a test row. The seeded Test Affiliate and test-mode sales record the sale and mark the credit as a test.
Needs attention reasons
| Reason | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Customer not found | No Stripe customer on your account matches the referrer's email | Pick the customer on the sale's page, or cancel the credit |
| No active subscription | The referrer has no active subscription to size a month from | Switch the campaign to a fixed amount, or cancel |
| Currency mismatch | The referrer's Stripe customer is settled in a different currency than the credit | Use one month of their plan instead of a fixed amount, or cancel |
| Stripe app required | Rekomi could not use your Stripe App connection | Reconnect the Rekomi app for Stripe from Integrations, then retry |
| Amount too large | The credit is above the safety ceiling | Cap it on the campaign, then retry |
Anything else is a temporary Stripe error. Rekomi keeps retrying with growing gaps for a week; you can also retry from the sale's page at any time.
Other billing platforms
Free month rewards are Stripe only for now. Campaigns on Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce and the other gateways keep cash commissions.