PayPal
Trigger referrals on new PayPal payments or automatically send one-time PayPal payouts as rewards.
Last updated
Trigger referrals on new PayPal payments or automatically send one-time PayPal payouts as rewards.
Last updated
Note: The PayPal integration is only available to users on the GrowSurf Business plan or higher. The following countries and currencies are supported here.
When you connect your PayPal account to your GrowSurf campaign and enable Referral Trigger, GrowSurf will automatically detect and trigger referrals on new PayPal charges.
GrowSurf will check if the PayPal customer's email address matches a GrowSurf participant's email address. If a match is found, then a referral will trigger, giving referral credit to the referrer and unlocking any rewards, if applicable. If a referral has already been triggered (and referral credit already was awarded), then nothing else will happen because referral credit can only be awarded once.
Here's how to set up PayPal referral triggers:
Important Note: Unless your campaign is configured to add participants automagically (see image), you'll need to make sure you first call JavaScript growsurf.addParticipant() or REST API /POST Add Participant to add new participants.
Step 1: In Campaign Editor > 4. Options > Integrations, click the Connect to PayPal button
Step 2: Once connected, GrowSurf will have Referral Trigger enabled by default.
(Optional) Step 3: You can add a referral trigger hold period by toggling the Show advanced settings section.
Note: The referral trigger hold period is useful for preventing fraud and helps minimizes losses due to refunds and chargebacks. During this hold period, if there is a refund or chargeback, the referral trigger will be cancelled completely.
When a GrowSurf participant unlocks a reward, send them a one-time PayPal payout. The payout will be sent to the GrowSurf participant's email address.
The following fees are applied on payouts made through PayPal's API:
United States: $0.25 USD per U.S. transaction
International: 2% of the recipient payment amount, up to a certain amount
Individual payments cannot exceed $20,000 USD.
No fees are charged to the recipient.
To utilize the PayPal payout feature, you'll need the following (full PayPal payout instructions can be found here) prior to set up:
A PayPal business account (you can sign up for a PayPal business account here)
A confirmed identity, email, and bank account linked to your PayPal business account
Add sufficient funds to your PayPal business account (make sure to cover enough for payout totals and fees)
Step 1: In Campaign Editor > 4. Options > Integrations, click the Connect to PayPal button.
You must first select a default currency for your GrowSurf campaign in order to use PayPal.
Step 2: Once connected, click the Payouts tab and connect a reward(s) to PayPal by clicking the Connect a Reward button.
Note: When you connect to PayPal, Referral Trigger will be enabled by default. If you are triggering referrals another way, disable the toggle in the Referral Trigger tab.
Enter the details of the payout including the name, payout note (this will appear as a note to the PayPal recipient), and payout type. You can also click Show advanced payout settings to view more customization settings.
Advanced feature tip: Issue different reward amounts by using dynamic rewards
Dynamic rewards let you offer different reward values based on specific attributes of the referred friend (such as the pricing plan they signed up for) or referrer (such as their partner status).
For example, you can award $50 payouts to winners when their referral signs up for your base plan or $100 payouts when they sign up for a higher-costing plan.
Then hit Save. Now, anytime this reward is unlocked by a winning participant, a PayPal payout will also be sent to the PayPal customer associated with the GrowSurf participant email address.
With double-sided rewards, you have full flexibility in choosing who gets the payout reward: (1) just the referrer, (2) just the referred person, (3) or both referrer and referred person.
Once you save the reward, you should see a green dot, indicating that the PayPal Payouts integration is enabled.
Important Note:
Regardless or not whether there is a linked PayPal account to the GrowSurf participant's email address, PayPal will still send out an email notifying them that they have a pending balance so they would simply need to sign up for a PayPal account.
We recommend that you mention upfront (i.e, in your referral program's terms and conditions) that participants will be sent the PayPal payout to the email address associated with their GrowSurf participant email address.
But if you would like to let participants to be able to choose the email address where they will receive their PayPal payout, please follow this recommended workflow:
Enable manual reward approval in Campaign Editor > 4. Options
Add a new Zap for New Participant Reward events with a Zap Filter checking that "Reward Is Approved" is false. If so, send an email to the participant and ask them to confirm their email address for the PayPal payout.
If they mention they have a different email address, you can update the participant's email address from the GrowSurf admin dashboard.
Approve the reward, and the PayPal payout will be sent to the participant's new email address.
If there is an issue with PayPal payouts being sent out to winners, GrowSurf will send out a notification email to the campaign owner. The issue will also be stated in the participant's detail page when you view their reward or when you view the participant's activity logs.
Here are some common reasons why there may be failures:
There may be an issue with your PayPal account. For payouts to work, you must have a verified business PayPal account with access to PayPal payouts and sufficient funds. View the requirements.
If dynamic reward rules are enabled for the PayPal reward, there may have been no matching rule found.
If there was a failure, you will need to manually issue the payout from your PayPal dashboard.
Go to your PayPal Transactions History page to view all transactions
You can disregard the "Mass Payment" items. They are not duplicate payments, but rather records of GrowSurf's usage of the PayPal API to send out payouts via Mass Pay.
Click "Filter", select "Payments sent" for "Transaction type", then click "Apply Filters". You can now browse the list to confirm if payouts were sent out to GrowSurf participants.
If the GrowSurf participant does not have a PayPal account (or if it is unconfirmed), they will receive an email from PayPal notifying them to sign up for one or to confirm their account.
If you have manual reward approval enabled for your campaign: PayPal payouts will only be issued to the winner(s) only after you approve the reward.
If the referral was triggered recently (or if the reward was approved recently), please allow for a few minutes of server processing before viewing the participant's reward from your GrowSurf admin dashboard. During this time, the data displayed for the participant's reward may not be accurate.
