Referrals overview
Give every user a personal invite link and code, attribute the installs that follow, and pay both sides when the conditions you set are met.
A referral programme turns your users into a channel. Each user gets a personal link and a code. When someone follows that link, installs, and does whatever you decide counts, both sides can be rewarded.
Referrals runs on top of Links, so a referral inherits exactly the match Links decided, including whether that match was deterministic or inferred. Nothing here re-implements attribution.
The shape of it
A user asks for their link
The SDK calls for a personal link. Vouch creates a participant, mints a link carrying the programme and the inviter, and generates a code for people who would rather type or say it.
Someone follows it and installs
The install is matched back to the link, and a referral is created in pending.
They do the thing that counts
You choose the conditions: creating an account, starting a trial, a first purchase, a purchase over an amount, a custom event, or staying subscribed for a number of days. Conditions combine with AND.
Both sides are rewarded
The referral becomes qualified and a reward is issued for each side you configured, subject to
your caps and tiers.
Three limits worth knowing before you start
These are deliberate. They exist so the numbers you report to yourself are true.
A probabilistic match only counts if you allow it. When the store carries a token, the match is
certain. When it does not, Vouch can infer the match from a device fingerprint, and that inference
can be wrong. A programme refuses probabilistic matches unless allow_probabilistic is set, and
wherever one is used it is labelled as such in the referral, the reports and the exports.
An invitee is referred once, ever. Not once per period, once. It is enforced by a unique index
in the database rather than by application code, so a retry or a race cannot create a second
referral. If two inviters have a claim, your conflict_policy decides between them.
An ambiguous match rewards nobody. If two different links fit the same fingerprint equally
well, Vouch records ambiguous and delivers nothing rather than guessing. A wrong attribution
costs you a reward and tells an inviter something untrue.
Rewards are reported per unit, never as a single total. Credits, coupons and entitlement days cannot be added together into a number that means anything.