Who PartnerStack is
PartnerStack is a partner relationship management platform, PRM for short: software for recruiting partners, tracking what they bring and paying them. It began as GrowSumo, whose founders went through the Y Combinator accelerator in 2015, and since April 2026 it has been part of AppDirect, a B2B subscription commerce company. Its contracting company, PartnerStack LLC, gives its registered office in San Francisco. It is built for products sold to businesses: affiliates and influencers who share links, referral partners who submit leads, and resellers and agencies who register deals and sell alongside your own team. Its network counts more than 131,000 active partners.
Each partner has a partnership with your programme, known by a partner key, and sits in one group at a time, which can have its own offers. A business they bring becomes a customer in PartnerStack, its payments are transactions, and triggers, the if-this-then-that rules your team builds in the dashboard, turn those into commissions. PartnerStack pays the partners itself: the month's approved commissions go onto one invoice, and partners withdraw by direct deposit, PayPal or Stripe. It has a REST API, webhooks and server-to-server tracking, states that its platform is SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, and uses Sift to watch for fraud. It is made for partners that are businesses themselves, which is why it is one of the affiliate and partner programme connectors of our Rewards & referrals module.
What it does in your platform
Rewards & referrals
Runs the partner programme for a business product, such as a business account or a payment gateway. Accountants, agencies and software resellers apply, get their own link and dashboard, and refer businesses by link or as leads. The platform tells PartnerStack from its server which referred business signed up and when its first payment settled, PartnerStack's triggers work out the commission, and PartnerStack pays the partner. That reward is a commission paid through PartnerStack, not a credit in your ledger: the ledger pays rewards to your own customers, never a partner's commission.
How the connection works
PartnerStack offers a browser snippet, PartnerStackJS, but the platform reports from its server. A referred sign-up goes to PartnerStack's server-to-server (S2S) conversion endpoint with the click ID from the partner's link, authorised by a tracking token. Payments go to the Vendor API's /v2/transactions endpoint, authorised by the API keys. The token and the keys never leave the server.
A partner joins your programme
An accounting firm applies to your programme and your team approves the application in PartnerStack. The firm now has a partnership, with a partner key, a link and a place in a group, for example Accountants, whose offer reads: a fixed commission for each referred business that passes verification and makes a first payment. The platform learns of the new partner through the partnership.created webhook.
A client follows the link
The accountant sends the link to a client, a shop that needs a business account. PartnerStack records the click and passes the visitor on to your sign-up page with a click ID in the address, ps_xid, which the platform keeps with the visitor's session. PartnerStack's default is to credit the last click within 90 days. A partner who would rather introduce a business by name submits it as a lead in the partner dashboard, and when that business opens its account the lead is converted to a customer through /v2/leads/{lead_key}/convert.
The business signs up
When the shop opens its account, the platform's server posts the click ID to the S2S conversion endpoint with a customer_key, which is the platform's random ID for the business. Name and email are optional there, and PartnerStack's own documentation suggests anonymised values for privacy, so by default the platform sends neither. PartnerStack attributes the customer to the accountant. Nothing is earned yet: the programme has no trigger on a sign-up.
Verification, then a first payment
The shop passes business verification (KYB, the checks on a company and its owners, part of our KYC / AML module) and makes its first payment. Only when both are in the platform's own records does the server create a transaction through POST /v2/transactions. It names the business by the same random ID, in customer_external_key, with a currency, a product_key and the amount your team chose to report, for example the fees the business paid. Card numbers, account numbers and balances are never part of it.
The commission is created
The transaction fires the trigger your team built in PartnerStack's dashboard. We set the offer up as a drip offer, whose delay matches your refund period, so the commission stays scheduled until that has passed. It is then pending until your team approves it under Review commissions, goes onto the month's invoice, and becomes available for the accountant to withdraw. The money reaches the partner from PartnerStack, never as a credit in your ledger.
A refund takes it back
If the shop's first payment is refunded inside that period, the platform deletes the transaction through DELETE /v2/transactions/{transaction_key}, and the scheduled commission is never created. A commission that is already pending can still be declined by your team before its invoice is settled. Once a partner has been paid, PartnerStack does not take money out of their balance: your team asks its support for a clawback, a negative commission set against what the partner earns next.
Next to other providers
PartnerStack looks after the partners, and the platform decides what counts. Business verification stays with our KYC / AML module, and the Fraud & risk module checks each referred business against the identities and devices the platform already knows, so a partner that refers its own company earns nothing, whatever PartnerStack's own monitoring also flags. The conditions for a qualifying business are set in your Backoffice, the offers, groups and triggers in PartnerStack's dashboard, and the programme can be switched off for a country or a product where incentives are restricted. When a partner's link has to open your app, the attribution connector of the Analytics & monitoring module, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch or Singular, carries the click ID through the install. Refer-a-friend rewards for your own customers run on the module's referral connectors and are paid by the Ledger.
PartnerStack is one of the module's affiliate and partner programme connectors, next to impact.com, Awin and Everflow, which suit programmes built around affiliates and publishers. The click IDs, the conditions, the abuse checks and the record of every event reported stay in your platform, so a move to one of the others swaps the connector and leaves your sign-up flow as it is. The partners themselves stay behind: their partnerships, links, groups, triggers and unpaid commissions live in PartnerStack. Your list of partners can be read through its API, but each partner would be invited again and given a new link, and the offers would be built again in the new tool.
When PartnerStack fits best
A strong fit when
- Your product is sold to businesses, and the people who recommend it are firms themselves: accountants, agencies, consultants and software resellers.
- You want links, submitted leads and registered deals in one programme, each with commission rules your team builds and changes in a dashboard.
- You want partners in many countries paid without running the payouts yourself: PartnerStack gathers the month's commissions and pays each partner by direct deposit, PayPal or Stripe.
Also worth a look
- impact.com, Awin or Everflow, the module's other affiliate and partner programme connectors, when your partners are mostly affiliates and publishers, or your team already works in one of them.
- A partner tool your team already runs: its account becomes a connector too.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your PartnerStack account and contract in place, with its data processing addendum. PartnerStack's documentation says to confirm with its team that an account can use server-to-server tracking, so we settle that first. Commissions can be set in US dollars or in euros.
The data
PartnerStack's privacy policy says all information is transferred to the United States for storage and processing, and every sub-processor it lists is there. Its data processing addendum relies on the EU's Standard Contractual Clauses, and it names representatives in the EU and the UK. We tell you this before you sign, and it is one reason the platform sends so little: a random ID for each business, the click ID and the amounts you chose to report. Lead forms are the exception, because a partner types in a contact's first name, last name and company, so with your team we keep those forms short. Together we also set the groups, offers, triggers and the drip delay that matches your refund terms.
The keys
The Vendor API's public and secret keys and the S2S tracking token go into your platform's secrets, and PartnerStack itself warns against putting the secret key in client-side code. Its webhook documentation describes no signature to check, so the platform gives each webhook a long address that cannot be guessed, treats what arrives as a prompt, and reads the object back through the API before acting on it.
A full test run
PartnerStack issues test API keys next to the production ones, and every account has a test partner, gstest. We first run the API calls with the test keys: a test customer under the test partner, then a test transaction. Transactions for test customers create no commissions, so the last run follows PartnerStack's own testing guide on the production keys: a test partner's link, a sign-up, a first payment and a refund, with the test commission declined so it never reaches an invoice, and the test data removed afterwards.
