How to Set Up Referral Rewards

Referral rewards let you incentivize word-of-mouth by rewarding both the referring customer and the friend they bring in. The referrer gets their reward once the friend makes their first qualifying purchase.

Steps

1. Navigate to Referrals

Go to Loyalty Program > Referrals tab in your merchant dashboard. This is where all referral reward settings live.

2. Set Reward Amounts

You will see two fields to configure:

• Referring Customer Reward — This is what the existing customer earns when their friend makes a qualifying purchase. You can set this as a fixed dollar amount (e.g., $5 in Bitcoin) or a percentage of the friend's purchase total. Use the toggle addon next to the input to switch between $ and %.
• Referred Friend Bonus — This is the bonus the new customer receives on their first order. Like the referrer reward, you can toggle between a fixed dollar amount and a percentage.

When either reward is set to a fixed dollar amount, a Minimum Purchase Requirement section appears automatically. This is designed to protect your margins. The system calculates a recommended minimum (2x the floor of combined rewards) and displays a warning if the minimum you set is too low to cover the combined reward payouts. A reward breakdown preview shows exactly how much goes to each party relative to the purchase total.

3. Save and Activate

Click Save Changes to store your configuration. Then confirm that the program status shows Active. If the status is not active, toggle it on so customers can begin earning referral rewards.

Optional Configuration

These settings are all found under the Advanced Options section on the Referrals page.

Lifetime Commission

Toggle this on to give the referrer an ongoing percentage of every future purchase the referred friend makes — not just the first one. When enabled, an additional field appears where you can enter the commission percentage.

This is particularly powerful for businesses with high repeat-purchase rates (e.g., consumables, subscriptions, or services). It turns your best customers into long-term growth partners — they have a continuous incentive to keep referring because they earn on every future order their referrals place, not just the first one. If your business model relies on customer lifetime value rather than one-time transactions, lifetime commission can be a strong fit.

Referral-Only Mode

Toggle this on if you only want to reward purchases that come through a referral link. When enabled, customers who make a purchase without a referral link will not earn any rewards at all.

Attribution Period

This controls how long after clicking a referral link the friend's purchase still counts as a referral. Choose from the following options:

• 30 days
• 60 days
• 90 days (default)
• 180 days

A longer attribution window gives referred friends more time to complete their purchase while still crediting the referrer. The default of 90 days works well for most businesses, but if you sell higher-consideration products where customers take longer to decide, extending to 180 days can help ensure referrers still get credit.

Applies To (Shopify only)

Choose which products or collections are eligible for referral rewards:

• All Products — Every item in your store qualifies.
• Specific Products — Select individual products from a searchable multi-select dropdown.
• Specific Collections — Select entire collections from a searchable multi-select dropdown.

Discount Code Defaults (Shopify only)

These settings control how auto-generated affiliate discount codes behave:

• Combinations — Check the boxes to allow the discount code to combine with product discounts, order discounts, or shipping discounts.
• Maximum discount uses — Limit the total number of times the code can be used, and optionally limit usage to once per customer.
• Purchase types — Specify whether the code applies to one-time purchases, subscriptions, or both. You can also set a recurring cycle limit for subscription discounts.
• Free shipping — Toggle on to include free shipping with the discount code.

What's Next

• Set up referral tiers — Create escalating commission rates that reward your best-performing affiliates automatically.
• Set up your affiliate program for content creators and influencers.
• Configure social engagement rewards to reward customers for sharing and interacting with your brand.
• Fund your rewards balance to make sure your account is funded and ready to pay out rewards.