Free month and store credit rewards

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 a free month of your product on your own billing platform. The credit comes off their next invoice automatically. Nobody needs a payout method, a bank connection or a tax form.

Free month rewards work on eight billing platforms: Stripe (through the Rekomi app for Stripe), Chargebee, Recurly, Paddle, Braintree, Lemon Squeezy, Dodo Payments and Mollie. Each one carries the credit in its own way; the Billing platforms section below says exactly what happens on yours. Available on the Starter plan and above.

How it works

1. You set a campaign's reward to Free month on your product instead of a cash commission.
2. Your customers join the campaign's signup page and share their referral link (or a coupon code).
3. When a referred friend pays their first invoice, Rekomi records the sale as usual and works out the referrer's credit.
4. Rekomi finds the referrer on your billing platform by email, sizes the credit from their own plan, and applies it there: a customer balance credit, a one-cycle discount, a free billing period or a skipped payment, depending on the platform. It comes off the referrer's next invoice.
5. 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 subscription on your billing platform 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. This is the only choice on Lemon Squeezy, which can give a free billing period but not an amount.
• 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 is applied the moment the friend's first invoice is paid. Braintree campaigns also have a Braintree discount id field, explained under Billing platforms.

What you need

• A connected billing platform that can carry the credit. On Stripe that is the Rekomi app for Stripe installed from the Stripe App Marketplace by your Stripe account owner (accepting the app's permissions in the Stripe dashboard is not enough on its own; the marketplace install completes the connection). On Chargebee, Recurly, Paddle, Braintree, Lemon Squeezy, Dodo Payments and Mollie it is the same key you connected in Integrations for sale tracking. The credit is applied on your own account there, so this connection is what posts it.
• 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_id on the subscription instead.
• If more than one billing platform is connected, the credit goes to the platform the friend paid on. A sale that does not say where it was paid waits as Needs attention so you can pick the customer, which also picks the platform.
• The Starter plan or above. Trials count.

Where the referrer's credit goes

Rekomi looks for the referrer on your billing platform in this order: a 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. Mollie has no email search, so Rekomi checks your newest 250 customers there; a referrer who bought through Rekomi before is always found.

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 applied in the referrer's own currency on your billing platform. 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. On Stripe that is a positive balance transaction on the referrer's customer (if they already used the credit, Stripe adds the difference to their next invoice). On Chargebee, Recurly and Dodo Payments the credit is deducted or voided while it is unused. On Paddle, Braintree, Lemon Squeezy and Mollie the discount, free period or skipped payment is removed while the next billing date is still ahead. A credit the referrer has already used on those platforms cannot be taken back automatically; the sale then reads Reversal failed and you decide whether to handle it yourself. 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, Reversed or Reversal failed. The sale's page shows the referrer's customer on your billing platform, the credit's reference there (balance transaction, credit invoice, discount or subscription), 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 billing platform.
• 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 customer on your billing platform 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

Anything else is a temporary error from the billing platform. Rekomi keeps retrying with growing gaps for a week; you can also retry from the sale's page at any time.

Store credit for Shopify, Wix and BigCommerce

Many stores would rather reward affiliates and referring customers with store credit than cash. On Shopify, Wix and BigCommerce the campaign's Reward switch reads Store credit on your store, and it works like this:

• What the affiliate earns. Either the campaign's commission rate on each referred order (a percentage or a flat amount, the default) or a fixed amount per sale. Every paid order earns, repeat customers included; this is a commission delivered as credit, not a one-time referral bonus. Partner groups, performance tiers, per-affiliate rates, coupon splits and per-product rates do not apply to credit campaigns.
• Where it goes. On Shopify the amount is added to the affiliate's store credit account (Shopify's own feature, applied at checkout when the affiliate is signed in with the same email). On BigCommerce it is added to the affiliate's customer store credit balance, in your store's currency. On Wix, which has no customer credit balance, Rekomi issues a gift card for the amount and Wix emails it to the affiliate; the site needs the Wix Gift Card app installed.
• Matching the affiliate. Rekomi finds the affiliate's customer account on your store by their Rekomi email. If there is none yet, the credit waits under Needs attention until you pick the customer or the affiliate creates an account with that email; nothing is lost.
• Refunds. A refunded order takes the credit back: a debit on the Shopify or BigCommerce balance, a disabled gift card on Wix. If the affiliate already spent it, the credit shows as consumed and nothing more happens.
• Permissions. Shopify needs the write store credit permission. Stores that installed the Rekomi app before this permission existed keep their old grant until the merchant reopens the app and approves the update; until then a credit waits under Needs attention with a "reopen the Rekomi app in Shopify" note. BigCommerce needs the Customers modify permission on the app; Wix needs the Gift Cards app on the site.
• No payout or tax paperwork. Store credit never enters a payout run, never counts toward the 3% on payouts, and never appears on a 1099. Affiliates on a store-credit campaign need no payout method and no tax form.
• Approval and caps. The same approval switch and per-sale cap as the free month apply.

You turn it on under the campaign's Sales leg, Reward, from the web dashboard or from the embedded Rekomi app in your store admin; a campaign can switch back to cash at any time (credits already posted stay).

Billing platforms

Each platform carries the credit with what it offers. The referrer's experience is the same everywhere: their next invoice is smaller or free, and they get the same email.

Stores (Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce) and the gateways with no credit primitive (Polar, Creem, Gumroad) keep cash commissions, and the Free month option does not appear on their campaign forms.