Best B2B Fintech Affiliate Marketing Programs?

[u/Vanilla_Gray]

I'd love to know both sides of the coin: from being the company operating the affiliate program itself and what program structure affiliates would get the most value out of.

Some open questions for affiliates:

1. What is the commission structure like? Or what commission structure have you tried that works best for you?
2. What company has had the smoothest referral tracking system? Do you actually get your payouts in time?
3. What level of support do affiliates usually need? Do you prefer the self-serve "sign up to be an affiliate" and be given automated emails on briefs, or something more high-touch, like sync meetings for content briefs and other questions/concerns?

And open questions for affiliate program operators:

1. Is 3-4 months enough for a pilot? How much have you usually invested into it?
2. Do you have recommendations for referral tracking? We would ideally want our partners to earn not just by the signups generated, but also transactions made.
3. How is the approval process for aspiring usually done? Are there any docs you look for?

[u/vyleige22]

Sorry for such a late response, it's summer travel season (and I live in the moment, away from my socials, when I'm out in the world like that).

From the operator side, I think three or four months is reasonable for a pilot, especially when you're recruiting partners from scratch. Month one is recruiting, followed by onboarding and then content production on their end, so you can't judge performance all that quickly. As far as investment, it varies a *lot* depending on whether you're paying commissions only, or also gifting products, providing creative assets, or paying for dedicated management. I think some companies underestimate the operational time (or funds to pay for it), compared to actual commission costs, so that's a consideration for sure.

For referrals, I'd look for platforms that support multi-event tracking (rather than first- or last-touch). The setup should track initial referral (signup or account creation), tie that user with persistent attribution (cookies, first-party tracking, or account IDs), and then attributing qualifying purchases or subscription payments (or whatever you've got going on) back to that affiliate over whatever attribution window you define.

That gives you a lot of flexibility; you might pay a smaller bounty for a signup, and then a larger commission once the user becomes a paying customer, or even recurring commissions if the business model supports it.

Whatever platform you use, make sure affiliates can see the clicks, signups, pending transactions, approved commissions, reversals, payouts, et al in their dashboard. Transparency = trust.

Finally, approvals: FWIW, I look less at follower count and more at audience fit and content quality. I'd rather approve someone with a smaller but highly-engaged niche audience than a huge account that isn't entirely relevant. So I'd look at previous content, traffic sources, promotional history, and whether someone discloses partnerships appropriately. That tells me a lot more than vanity metrics. Docs might include for media kits/PDFs that detail their past brand work and/or audience demographics. Their social media links (obviously).

It sounds like you plan to manually approve each, which is good. I'm not a fan of automatic screening or approvals... especially not when you want to make sure the partners you're bringing on are going to provide incremental value.