How do iGaming affiliates actually get paid?

This gets asked constantly and answered badly. Most of what is written about affiliate commission is written by people selling tracking software or recruiting affiliates, and it describes the models without describing the mechanics — which is where all of the friction lives.

So: the models, the timing, who chooses the method, what it costs to receive the money, and what quietly ends the arrangement. Everything below comes from four programmes' published terms and conditions. They agree on more than you would expect and disagree on exactly the clauses that matter.

What are the commission models?

Four main ones. Revenue share pays a percentage of a referred player's net revenue for as long as they play. CPA pays a fixed amount per depositing player acquired. Fixed fee pays a flat sum for placement. Hybrid combines a reduced CPA component with a lower revenue-share rate.

Those four are not the whole list. Cost per lead and CPM both exist, and sub-affiliate commission — paying you a slice of what affiliates you referred earn — is common enough to have its own section in most agreements. The listed affiliates cut it differently again: Better Collective's second quarter of 2026 books six revenue categories, including subscription at €4.2 million and CPM at €5.6 million alongside revenue share at €43.6 million, CPA at €19.5 million and sponsorship at €15.7 million.

The mix moves, and it moves differently at different companies. Over the same quarter Catena Media reported CPA at 88% of revenue from continuing operations, against 86% a year earlier, with revenue share down from 12% to 6% and fixed fee up from 2% to 6%.

That matters more than it sounds, because the models have different payment shapes. Revenue share is a recurring monthly settlement with a familiar counterparty. CPA and fixed fee are lumpier, faster-cycle and more likely to cross a border.

When does the money actually arrive?

Monthly, in arrears, with a lag — and a floor underneath it. This part is genuinely standardised, to the point where the drafting is near-identical across programmes with no obvious relationship to each other.

Betsson Group Affiliates: commission is "calculated at the end of each month and payments shall be made on a monthly basis in arrears, not later than the 10th of the following calendar month, provided that the amount due exceeds €50". Casumo Affiliates uses almost the same sentence — by the 15th, and provided the amount exceeds €300.

So work done on 1 August is paid somewhere around 10 to 15 September. Six weeks is normal, not slow.

The floor is the minimum payout threshold, and it is where programmes diverge sharply: €50 at Betsson, €100 at Condor Affiliates, €200 at The Casino Partners, €300 at Casumo. Anything below the threshold is carried into the next month. On a €300 threshold, a small affiliate earning €80 a month waits until April to see January's work.

Who decides how you get paid?

This is the clause worth reading, and it is the one the four programmes answer differently.

Betsson's terms say payment is made "through our Affiliate Wallet or such other means that we may determine from time to time at our sole discretion". Casumo's say the opposite: "Payment of Commissions shall be made in accordance with the payment method chosen by the Affiliate." Condor sits between them, undertaking to "attempt to accommodate the Affiliate's request regarding the payment method".

Nobody prices that difference, and it is worth a great deal. An affiliate with limited banking options and no say over the method has no leverage over the one term that decides what receiving the money costs them. An affiliate who chooses the method can route around a bad rail. Same commission rate, materially different net.

What does it cost to receive it?

Often the terms simply do not say — and silence is an answer.

We read Betsson's agreement looking for a clause allocating payment, conversion or transfer costs. There is not one. There is a clause making the affiliate responsible for the costs of meeting its own obligations, but that sits in the affiliate-obligations section and covers marketing and hosting, not the cost of being paid. In the absence of any allocation, the cost falls wherever the deduction happens — which is at the wallet, on the affiliate's side.

Some programmes say it outright. Condor Affiliates deducts a 10% transfer fee for e-wallet payments and passes bank charges to the affiliate. That is more honest than silence, even though it reads worse.

And if the method is a wallet, the wallet has a price list. Skrill's published German schedule charges up to 3.99% on currency conversion, 2.99% with a €0.50 minimum on sends to other Skrill accounts — reducible to 1.45% on its True Skriller tier — and a €5 monthly service fee once six months pass without a login or a transaction. The US schedule sets that dormancy trigger at twelve months and the fee at $5, which is worth knowing if you have landed on the wrong page.

What can end the arrangement without warning?

Automatic termination clauses, which get read even less often than the payment ones, and which diverge as sharply as the method clause.

Betsson's agreement terminates automatically on any of four six-month triggers: fewer than ten new customers in total across six consecutive months, six months without accessing the affiliate account, six months without a withdrawal from the wallet, or six months of negative commission. Condor allows twelve months, sends an inactive-account notice first and gives a further 45 days. The Casino Partners uses a year and makes it discretionary. Casumo has no inactivity termination at all.

Now read the withdrawal trigger against the threshold, because the interaction is worse than either clause looks alone. An affiliate accruing less than €50 a month never has commission paid into the wallet, so has nothing to withdraw, so trips a six-month trigger by earning slowly. And a residual balance is stranded: withdraw €50 of a €70 balance and the remaining €20 can never come out, because €50 is also the minimum withdrawal. On termination, that agreement provides that commission is no longer payable from the termination date.

None of which is anyone behaving badly. It is four separate clauses, each defensible on its own, interacting in a way nobody designed.

What to check before you sign

Five clauses, in the order they will cost you money:

• The payment method clause. Whose choice is it? This is the one that varies most and gets negotiated least.
• The minimum payout threshold — and whether there is a separate minimum withdrawal on top of it.
• Who bears conversion and transfer costs, and whether the agreement says at all.
• Negative carry-over. Most programmes operate a no-negative-carryover policy; the exception is usually a high-roller clause. In Betsson's terms it bites at €10,000 or more of negative commissionable revenue from a single high roller in a calendar month.
• Every automatic termination trigger, and whether inactivity you cannot control counts as inactivity.

One drafting note, offered as a caution rather than a criticism: these documents are long and they have wrinkles. The termination trigger quoted above is drafted as "failure to generate less than ten (10) New Customers", a double negative whose literal reading inverts the intended meaning. Elsewhere in the same agreement, a cross-reference points at a clause number that does not exist. Query things like that before you sign rather than after.

None of this is hidden. It is all in public terms that take twenty minutes to read.

What sits underneath it — why an affiliate's banking options are limited in the first place, and why that is not really the affiliate's fault — is a longer argument, and we made it separately in the piece on gambling affiliates and bank accounts.

If you run a programme and your terms differ from the ones described here, we would be glad to hear how. The public evidence on affiliate payment practice is remarkably thin, and we could not find a single survey of it.