AGS MAGAZINE: The next stage of growth

Affiliates sure do have a lot to think about. From choosing an offer and building campaigns to testing creatives, buying traffic, tracking performance and scaling what works. Somewhere in all of that, payments can easily become an afterthought. Luca Curtarelli, Payoneer’s Vice President of Go-to-Market in EMEA, talks about why affiliates should sort out the payment side earlier, what to look for when entering new markets, and where the next opportunities are opening up.

When payments get messy

Most affiliates don’t start out thinking too much about payment infrastructure. They get paid however their first network or advertiser happens to pay them. And when there are only one or two partners, that can work perfectly fine. Once five or six countries are involved, it starts to get messy.

There are wire fees slowly chipping away at the margin, exchange rates you didn’t choose, and payments that can take days to land. Sometimes receiving money properly means opening a local bank account in a country where you don’t actually operate. Then there’s the admin of reconciling different currencies, following up on late payments, and sorting tax paperwork, usually with a fairly lean team handling it all.

Part of the problem is that traditional cross-border payments weren’t designed around how affiliates work. They were built more for larger, occasional transfers rather than frequent payouts across different partners and markets. That can leave affiliates paying fees that feel disproportionate to the payment itself. While foreign exchange and slow settlement take another cut.

And it eventually becomes more than an inconvenience. If money takes longer to arrive, that can affect how quickly an affiliate puts it back into campaigns. Networks and advertisers also have to deal with failed payments, reconciliation and support issues on their side. When the payment process gets harder, everyone moves slower.

That is where Payoneer comes in. The Nasdaq-listed global payments platform has been operating for more than 20 years and serves customers across more than 190 countries and territories. For affiliates, it means being able to receive earnings from networks and advertisers, hold different currencies. Then move the money on to media spend, sub-affiliates or wherever else it needs to go.

“The affiliates who scale well tend to sort the payment infrastructure early, rather than letting it pile up as a problem they’ll fix later,” says Curtarelli.

Before entering a new market

Sorting out the payment side early is even more important when you’re entering a new market. Curtarelli often sees affiliates do the hard part and land the partnership. But only to find out afterwards that getting paid either slows everything down or costs more than expected.

So before agreeing to work with a new overseas partner, affiliates should already know how they will be paid. Is it fast? Is it compliant? What is it actually going to cost? And will you need another account to receive the money?

It also means understanding how payments typically work in that market and which tax or compliance documents will be required before the money starts coming in.

Currency is another thing to sort out. Affiliates should know what currency they’ll be paid in. Whether they can receive and hold it, and whether every payment will need to be converted. Being able to hold multiple currencies gives them more control over when to convert, rather than having a transfer choose the exchange rate for them.

This is also where local receiving accounts can make it much easier to enter a new market. Payoneer offers them in more than 10 currencies. This allows affiliates to receive payments locally without necessarily opening another bank account or setting up a local entity in every country they work with.

Beyond moving money

Of course, being able to move money reliably across markets is the baseline. You need that regardless.

But there’s also the question of how many separate systems you really want to manage. Curtarelli sees consolidation as one of the biggest ways to simplify operations. Bringing payments from different networks, advertisers and countries into one place. That gives you one view of what you’re owed, one place to make currency decisions and fewer sets of compliance paperwork to keep track of.

Beyond that baseline, Curtarelli thinks affiliates should also consider how well a payment provider understands their business models. Payouts can come frequently, there may be several parties involved, and earning across borders brings its own compliance requirements.

Fee and foreign-exchange transparency is part of that too, and it becomes much harder to ignore once volume grows. Those costs can be easy to overlook when you look at them one transaction at a time. Add them up across markets, and they start looking different. It’s worth choosing a provider that shows you the rate upfront, rather than one that leaves you to find out somewhere in the settlement.

The payment provider also needs to be able to grow with the business. Affiliates shouldn’t have to switch every time the operation grows or becomes more complex.

Support is another part of it. There is a difference between talking to someone who understands affiliate marketing and having every issue treated like a generic payment question. And as the business grows, the regulatory and compliance infrastructure supporting the provider becomes more important, too.

Curtarelli puts it this way: “The best payment setup is the one you barely have to think about, because it was built for how you actually work.”

Where the opportunities are

The expectations around payments are changing too. Speed is becoming less of a differentiator and more of something affiliates expect, alongside a clear, upfront answer to what’s owed and when it will land.

Curtarelli also expects affiliate activity to keep growing in regions that traditional payment infrastructure hasn’t served particularly well. That will put more pressure on the industry to offer local, flexible payment options rather than relying on the same international transfer model everywhere. At the same time, scrutiny around cross-border compliance is likely to increase, something he sees as positive in the long run because it raises the bar for everyone operating internationally.

As for where affiliates might find more opportunity, it depends on the vertical. Curtarelli points to parts of Eastern Europe and the Baltics, where there is strong technical talent and sophisticated affiliate operators despite the relatively small size of some of those markets. He is also seeing more activity from the Middle East and parts of Southeast Asia. Both from affiliates themselves and from advertisers looking to reach those markets. But there is usually another side to that opportunity.

Curtarelli says, “The more interesting a market is for affiliates, the more likely it is to come with its own currency and compliance requirements.”

This article was originally published in AGS Magazine. Explore the latest issue for more in-depth interviews, straightforward analysis and informed perspectives from across the affiliate and performance marketing industry.