Gift Cards & Cash Payouts
Pay referrers real money — gift cards, prepaid Visa cards, charity donations, and cash from a prefunded balance
The most common referral campaign is to pay the referrer monetary value for each new user they invite to your app. On Growth and above, money rewards are drawn from a prefunded balance you control. Set automatic reloads, maximum daily limits, and alerts on your account balance. Account balances are held in your name and cannot be used for Invitebase billing.
Every money reward is paid through Invitebase, in four categories: store gift cards, prepaid Visa cards, charity donations, and cash. Cash reaches the recipient as PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, bank transfer, or debit card. The Indie plan includes store gift cards and charity donations; Growth and Enterprise include every category and cash option.
How money rewards work
Like every reward, money rewards only fire on validated referrals — the referred user passed your qualification gates and the AI fraud check. From there:
- A hold for the reward amount is placed on your balance.
- The payout enters the payout queue
- The recipient gets an email or in-app link to claim their reward and pick how they receive it.
- On delivery, the hold converts to a debit and the reward moves to
fulfilled.
You choose how much choice the recipient gets when you configure the reward's method. monetary — the default for monetary rewards created in the campaign wizard — is a multi-product reward: the recipient picks among the categories you allow (categories; by default every category your plan includes) on the claim page. Pinning one category instead (gift_card, prepaid_visa, charity, or cash) restricts the claim page to it. For cash, cash_methods limits which of PayPal, Venmo, Cash App, bank transfer, and debit card the recipient can pick; the recipient only supplies the delivery details, such as their PayPal email. Either way the amount and currency you configure are what the recipient receives.
Invitebase charges a platform fee of 12.5% on Indie or 8.5% on Growth on every monetary reward paid out (including gift cards, which are cash equivalents) — that fee is billed on your monthly platform invoice, not drawn from your reward balance, and is in addition to your per-referral rate. Your users always receive the full face value you configure. App-grant and in-app rewards aren't monetary and carry neither fee.
Prefund the balance
Pre-funding is available on Growth and above only.
Your reward balance is strictly separate from your Invitebase usage billing — topping up never touches your subscription invoice, and usage fees never draw from reward funds.
Top up from Payouts → Balance in the dashboard.
On iOS and Android campaigns, cash rewards can only be used to reward the referrer (sender), not the receiver. The dashboard warns when you configure a money payout on a mobile campaign. Prefer app grants for the referred-user side.
Payout lifecycle
Every payout is visible in Payouts with its full history and payout order reference:
| State | Meaning |
|---|---|
queued | Created on validation; hold placed on the balance |
approved | Cleared auto-approval, or manually approved |
submitted | Order created with the payout provider |
fulfilled | Recipient claimed the reward; hold converted to a debit |
failed | Provider failure after retries; hold released, you are alerted |
cancelled | Cancelled before submission (rejection, clawback); hold released |
Two controls sit in front of submitted:
- Manual-approve gate — require human approval for all payouts, payouts above a dollar threshold, or per campaign. High-value payouts get a second look before money leaves your balance.
- Hold window — an optional vesting delay between validation and release, giving refunds and chargebacks time to arrive while the reward can still be clawed back.
Webhook events track the money side: reward.pending, reward.fulfilled, reward.failed, and payout.available (fired to power your own referrer notifications). See Webhooks.
Test with zero real funds
In test mode, payouts route exclusively to the payout sandbox and the test-mode ledger is fake-funded — you can exercise the entire loop (validate → hold → order → delivered) including simulated failures, without a real dollar moving. Live provider credentials are unreachable from test-mode code paths by design.
Taxes and compliance
Referral payouts to your users are reportable income; gift cards count as cash equivalents. Invitebase handles the mechanics through the payout provider. You will see collection status on the referrer's profile. Talk to your own advisors about your campaign's obligations in your local tax jurisdiction.