Who Referral Factory is
Referral Factory is referral programme software from Referral Factory BV, a Dutch company founded in 2020 by Kirsty Sharman and registered in Amsterdam. Its site presents it as software to build, run and scale customer, affiliate and partner programmes, and lists banking and finance among its industries. Each programme is a Campaign. The people who recommend you are Referrers, each with a unique referral link and code, and the people they bring are Leads, who start as Pending and become Qualified when the condition your business chose is met. Reward Rules then say what is owed: a reward is first Due and then Issued, through Tremendous, Stripe, PayPal, a webhook, Zapier, Make or n8n, or by your own system.
Developers work with it through its API, version 3 at api.referral-factory.com, with one Bearer access token per account and a limit of 600 calls a minute. Inbound webhooks qualify a lead, and outbound webhooks report a new referrer, a new lead, a qualified lead or an issued reward. Referral Factory states that it is SOC 2 Type II audited, ISO 27001 certified and GDPR compliant, acts as data processor under its Data Processing Addendum, and says its servers are hosted in Germany. It also offers hosting in Europe or the USA and, for qualifying enterprise deployments, a data service run in the client's own environment. It leaves the decision that a referral is real to the business running the programme, which is why it is one of the referral programme connectors of our Rewards & referrals module.
What it does in your platform
Rewards & referrals
Runs your refer-a-friend programme: gives every customer who joins a referral code and link, keeps the record of who referred whom, and works out which rewards are due under the Reward Rules your team sets. The platform tells it from the server when a referred friend has really qualified, and pays money rewards through the ledger. Referral Factory holds a first name and an email address for each participant, and nothing about their money.
How the connection works
Referral Factory publishes no SDK for the apps, and none is needed: the invitation screens are the platform's own, and every call goes from the platform's server to Referral Factory's API, with an access token that never leaves the server. Customers are created through /referrers, their friends through /leads, a friend is qualified through /leads/qualification, and rewards are read and closed through the /rewards endpoints.
A customer joins the programme
In the app, a customer opens the invitation screen and accepts the programme's terms. The platform's server calls POST /referrers with the campaign's ID, the customer's first name and their email address, the three fields Referral Factory requires. Referral Factory creates the referrer with a unique code and referral link, plus sharing links for email, WhatsApp, Telegram and other channels and a QR code, and the app shows them. The platform keeps Referral Factory's ID and code next to the customer's random platform ID.
A friend signs up with the code
The friend installs the app and signs up with the code, typed in or carried through the install by an attribution connector of the Analytics & monitoring module. The server then calls POST /leads with the friend's first name, their email address and the referrer's code. The lead starts as Pending, and nothing is earned yet. If the same email address arrives later with another customer's code, Referral Factory keeps the first referrer. A friend who signs up without a code is never sent to it.
The platform checks its own records
The friend passes the checks of the KYC / AML module and makes a first card payment that settles within the 30 days your team set. The Fraud & risk module compares the two people against verified identities and known devices. Referral Factory's own duplicate check compares email addresses within a campaign, and its help pages say a self-referral under a different address may not be spotted automatically, so the decision is made here.
The server qualifies the lead
Only when every condition holds does the server call PUT /leads/qualification with the lead's ID and qualified set to true. No payment amount, card detail or KYC result travels with it. Referral Factory marks the lead Qualified and applies the campaign's Reward Rules, and a reward for the customer who shared the code appears as Due.
The ledger pays the reward
The Reward Rule uses the Issue Yourself method, so Referral Factory pays nothing itself. The platform reads the reward from GET /rewards/due/{campaign_id}, with its ID, recipient and amount, and credits the customer's balance from the marketing budget account in the ledger, inside the caps set in the backoffice. Once the ledger entry is booked, the server calls POST /rewards/issue/{id}, and the reward shows as Issued in Referral Factory and in the app.
A refund takes it back
If the friend's card payment is refunded or charged back, the ledger reverses the credit and the server sends qualified set to false, which returns the lead to Pending. A reward that is still Due is closed with POST /rewards/cancel/{id}. A reward already marked Issued can no longer be cancelled in Referral Factory, whose help pages leave its reversal to the system that paid it, so the ledger stays the record of what was paid and what was taken back.
Next to other providers
Referral Factory keeps the referral itself, and the other modules do the rest. KYC / AML and Fraud & risk decide whether a referral counts, the Ledger module pays and reverses money rewards, and the Notifications module tells customers what they earned, so the API's notify flag, which makes Referral Factory send its own welcome message, stays off. Where a shared link has to open the app, AppsFlyer, Adjust, Branch or Singular, the attribution connectors of the Analytics & monitoring module, carry the code through the install. A gift card reward goes out through Runa, the module's reward delivery connector, or through Tremendous, one of Referral Factory's own issuing methods. A reward in points is set up as a Custom reward, which Referral Factory records as due and the ledger or a loyalty connector such as Talon.One, Voucherify or Open Loyalty adds to the balance.
Referral Factory is one of the module's referral programme connectors, next to GrowSurf, which calls itself all-in-one referral programme software and names fintech among the teams it serves, and Friendbuy, a platform for referral, loyalty and influencer programmes that lists financial services among its industries. The conditions for a referral to count, the identity and device checks, the ledger entries and each customer's reward history live in your platform, so a later move swaps the connector and leaves your apps' screens and your books as they are. Campaigns and Reward Rules are the part that stays behind: they are built in Referral Factory and would be built again in the new tool, which would also issue new codes and links.
When Referral Factory fits best
A strong fit when
- You want a refer-a-friend programme where a reward is owed only after a milestone of your own, such as an approved account and a first payment, and your server is the one that says so.
- Your growth team wants to set reward amounts and who receives them in a dashboard, without an app release, while money moves only through your ledger.
- You want a European supplier for the programme: a Dutch company that says its servers are in Germany, with a SOC 2 Type II audit and an ISO 27001 certificate.
Also worth a look
- GrowSurf or Friendbuy, the module's other referral programme connectors, when your team already works in one of them.
- A referral tool your team already runs: its account becomes a connector too.
How we get you live
The contract
We help you get your Referral Factory account and contract in place, with API and webhook access and its Data Processing Addendum, under which Referral Factory acts as data processor and your company as data controller.
The data
A participant's record holds a first name and an email address, which Referral Factory's API requires, and no extra fields unless your team asks for one. Your programme terms tell customers that these two details are shared for the programme they join. Reward amounts and who receives them are set as Reward Rules in Referral Factory's dashboard, with Issue Yourself as the issuing method and Auto Issue off, so a reward waits as Due until the ledger has paid it. The conditions for a referral to count, the budget, the caps for each customer and the countries and products where the programme runs are set in the backoffice.
The keys
Referral Factory issues one API access token per account, and generating a new one switches the old one off, so it lives only in your platform's secrets and is changed in a planned window. The account is protected with two-factor authentication, as Referral Factory advises. Its documentation describes no signature on outbound webhooks, so the platform accepts one only with the secret header set for it, and reads the record back through the API before acting on it. The apps carry no Referral Factory key at all.
A full test run
Referral Factory's documentation describes no separate sandbox: it asks that tests run on a test campaign, not the live one. We set one up with its own Campaign ID and made-up people, and run the whole case against the platform's test ledger: a referrer, a lead, a qualification from the server, a Due reward, a credit, the reward marked Issued, then a refund that takes it back. The test records are deleted through the API before your first real customer.
