Connect Stripe so your commissions can be paid automatically

Connecting Stripe gives an automated payout somewhere to land. Your clicks, conversions and commissions are tracked and approved whether you connect or not, but the automatic transfer only runs once there is a Stripe account to send to.

Connect your account

1. Open Settings in the affiliate portal and go to the Payment tab.
2. Find the Stripe Connect card and click "Connect with Stripe".
3. A "Set up payouts" box asks one question: "Where is your bank account?" Pick the country and click Continue.
4. Stripe's own onboarding opens in a new window. If your browser blocks it, allow popups and click "Try again" in the banner that appears.
5. Once Stripe has finished checking your details, the card's status changes from Not Connected to Connected on its own. That is not always instant, and the page updates itself while you wait.

Pick the country where your bank account actually is. Stripe fixes the country when the account is created and it cannot be changed afterwards, so a wrong answer leaves you with a payout account that cannot be used.

What Stripe asks for

The account is created as an individual account and your sign-in email is filled in for you. Everything after that belongs to Stripe: your name and date of birth, your address, and the bank details the money should land in. The exact questions depend on your country.

The card then shows three lines straight from Stripe: Payouts Enabled, Account Details (submitted or incomplete) and Charges Enabled. If Stripe is still waiting on something, a payout aimed at you is not lost. It is held and retried once a day, and it goes out automatically the moment your account is ready. You also get a "A payout is waiting for you" notification and an email, both linking back to the Payment tab.

Where automatic payouts can reach

Automatic transfers only work to accounts registered in the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Switzerland and the European Economic Area, which includes Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. The country dropdown lists exactly that set, so if yours is missing it is not payable this way. This is a Stripe restriction on where a platform can send funds, not a rule LinkJolt chose. The "My country isn't listed" link in the dialog says the same thing. When a program you promote accepts PayPal or Wise, it points you at that option on the same page, where you add your email and the merchant pays you by hand instead. When your programs pay by Stripe only, it says so: ask the program whether it can pay you another way.

There is a second limit that has nothing to do with where you live. Automatic transfers only go out for commissions tracked in pounds, US dollars or euros, because those are the only currencies this platform settles in. A commission tracked in Canadian dollars or Swedish kronor cannot be sent automatically, even to a connected account in a listed country. Your commission is not lost when that happens: the queued payout is cancelled rather than retried, the commission stays approved, and you get the same "A payout is waiting for you" notification asking you to add a PayPal or Wise email so the merchant can pay you directly.

If there is no Stripe card at all

Merchants choose which payout methods their program accepts. If none of the programs you promote pay by Stripe, the Stripe Connect card is not shown on the Payment tab at all, and the banner at the top of that tab tells you what they do pay by. Use the option offered there instead: a PayPal or Wise card asking for one email address. Saving your email there is what lets the merchant pay you that way.

Nothing is lost either way. Your commissions keep tracking and getting approved, and the merchant pays you by hand from their own PayPal, Wise or bank account, working from their export of approved commissions. The topic "When and how do affiliates actually get paid?" covers that side of the process.

When the money actually moves

The merchant approves the commission first. Nothing is sent before that. If they have automatic payouts turned on, the approved commission is queued about a day ahead and goes out on a daily run. Some merchants pay by hand instead, which also sends to your connected account.

Payouts go out in the currency each commission was earned in, which for an automatic transfer is always pounds, US dollars or euros, and Stripe converts to your account's currency on its side for about 2%. LinkJolt takes 0%. If a sale is refunded before the payout runs, the queued payout is cancelled, or reduced to match if only part of the sale was refunded. The topic "What happens to an affiliate's commission when a sale is refunded?" explains what that does to the commission itself.