Great news for tech-savvy users and for Romanian affiliates and advertisers! We’ve just launched two updates that might be very interesting to them.

Public API

As of now, we have a few API endpoints for both affiliates and advertisers. They are documented here and we have also made a PHP wrapper available here. Our plan is to iterate over the methods available and gradually offer every bit of functionality that is possible in the interface. For now, though, we have focused on what we think matters most:

• advertisers can automatically accept/reject/edit their commissions by integrating 2Performant into their order management system
• affiliates can programatically get banners and products from the feeds
• affiliates and advertisers can programatically access information about their own commissions and about affiliate programs

We’ve even created a sandbox for you to play with in order to test this API. The API base URL changes to https://sandbox-api.2performant.com in this case. You will automatically get some “fake” money into your account so that you can get to the interface.

If you need your test program to be active, drop us an email at developer@2performant.com and let us know. We’ll try to help ASAP, but giving priority to real programs and affiliates rather than test instances.

Multiple currencies

This is a big one. Basically, what we have done is allow advertisers to be billed in Romanian lei (RON) and hold the value of commissions generated for them in RON as well. Affiliates can also withdraw their balances in whichever of the two currencies.

This means that, as an affiliate, you can now generate commissions in 2 currencies: EUR and/or RON, depending on which advertisers you promote. You can still withdraw those balances in whichever currency you want, read on for details.

Advertisers outside Romania (not working in RON)

If you’re an advertiser whose billing profile is registered outside Romania, this does not impact you at all. Everything works exactly like before, as far as you are concerned.

Romanian advertisers

If you’re an advertiser running a company in Romania, you should know that you can now be billed in RON (Romanian leu). In turn, the commissions generated in your affiliate program hold their value in Romanian lei. This means that your commissions are converted from the currency in which you set up your program (most likely also RON) to RON upon being generated, using the exchange rate available that day. Those commissions will be made available to your affiliates also in RON, contributing to their RON balance.

Here’s an example: let’s say that you are a Romanian company operating a store in Bulgaria. Your “working currency”, as we call it, will be RON and your program currency will probably be BGN. This means that the prices on your site are in BGN, you cash in money from your customers in BGN and you get billed by 2Performant in RON.

Let’s presume you have a sale commission of 10% and an affiliate sends you a customer who buys something worth 100BGN (excluding taxes and shipping). The tracking code detects this sale and generates a commission that should be worth 100 * 10% = 10 BGN to the referring affiliate. This 10 BGN amount gets converted to RON (your working currency) using the standard exchange rate available that day (let’s presume the value is 22.7 RON) and the affiliate’s RON balance is credited with 22.7 RON. Your account balance will decrease by 22.7 RON + the network fee according to your pricing plan.

Commission listings and stats are listed in euros, but we are working on changing that to whatever you prefer.

Affiliates not working with Romanian advertisers

If you only work with advertisers whose working currency is EUR, nothing changes for you. Everything works exactly like before in terms of account balance. Read on about withdrawals if you want to get paid in RON.

Affiliates working with Romanian advertisers

If you are an affiliate promoting both programs which have RON as their working currency and programs which have EUR as their working currency, then you automatically get 2 account balances: one in EUR and one in RON. They are both yours and you can still withdraw money in whichever currency you want, but the commissions you generate hold their value in the currency that the advertiser opted to pay them. More on withdrawals further down.

For example: let’s presume you promote web shop A working in EUR and having their prices listed in CZK and shop B working in RON and having their prices shown in RON as well. Both programs offer a 10% sale commission.

One day a visitor that you refer to shop A buys something worth 1.000 CZK. You are automatically given a commission worth the equivalent in EUR of 10% * 1.000 CZK. Let’s presume the exchange rate dictates that this value is 3.69 EUR.

The next day, a visitor you sent to shop B orders something worth 250 RON. This will generate a commission worth 10% * 250 RON in RON. Obviously, the currency exchange (from RON to RON) changes nothing, so you are entitled to a 25 RON commission.

You now have 3.69 EUR and 25 RON in your balance(s). You don’t have the equivalent in RON of 3.69 EUR and you don’t have the equivalent in EUR of 25 RON. They’re separate.

As it’s difficult to compare apples and oranges, let alone add them up, we will present the commission listings and stats in EUR. We couldn’t find a way to add RON and EUR, so we came up with this convention.

You will find the value in the working currency in the commission details for each individual commission. Please keep in mind that statistics will hold the commissions’ values in EUR at the time they were generated and are not an accurate depiction of the amounts you, as an affiliate, will withdraw. They can, however, give you a decent estimate of your ROI (or a very precise one, if you only work with programs who have EUR as their working currency).

We have a plan regarding the possibility to select the reference currency for the stats (i.e. switching to EUR instead of RON), this will be a feature you can use in the near future.

Withdrawals for affiliates

As an affiliate, it’s your right to claim the value of the commissions you’ve generated. It’s also possible to have as many payment profiles as you need, each with its own attached currency.

Starting from now, you may find yourself having money in both your RON balance and in your EUR balance.

Having money in a single balance with the same currency as your payment profile, or if you only withdraw money from the balance that’s in the same currency as your payment profile, everything’s very straightforward: you can withdraw that amount (minus due taxes, if any) in the same currency.

If, however, all or part of your withdrawal amount is in a different currency than that of the profile used for that respective withdrawal, then a currency exchange will take place (both in the interface and in the real world). Since some advertisers that you generated commissions for have paid those commissions in – let’s say – RON and you want to withdraw EUR, we need to actually exchange whatever amount we set aside for your commissions from RON to EUR.

Since no exchange service operates for free, we need to make this conversion using an operational exchange rate that’s equal to the standard exchange rate + 2%. So if you want to withdraw 100 RON from your account and the payment profile you use is set up for EUR, then your money will be converted like this:

• standard exchange rate is 1 EUR = 4.4532 RON
• operational exchange rate = 4.4532 + 2% = 4.5423 (rounded to 4 decimals)
• amount in EUR = 100 / 4.5423 = 22.02 EUR (rounded to 2 decimals)

This 22.02 EUR amount is subject to taxes, if applicable to your payment profile (e.g. income tax).

If, along with these 100 RON, you also wanted to withdraw 32 EUR out of your account, then the total payment made to you after approval would be 32 +22.02 = 54.02 EUR minus taxes. Your RON balance would drop by 100 RON and your EUR balance would drop by 32 EUR.

Conclusion

Although it may seem complicated, it’s actually a lot simpler to actually force the commissions to hold their value through time, regardless of the exchange rate’s natural variation. This way, you always know that affiliates are paid exactly what they are worth and what has been paid for them by advertisers. Of course, we can address any concerns or questions that you send our way.

So… let us know what you think about these developments in the comment section below.