Manual Bank account payouts

Manual Bank Account is the payout method for programs that would rather pay affiliates from their own bank. Referly collects each affiliate’s bank details, groups the amounts into a batch, and gives you everything you need to make the transfers — but you make them yourself, in your own banking, and then tell Referly they’re done. It’s the only cash method with no third party in the middle. That’s its strength and its cost: total control, no platform fee, no country restrictions, and no automation whatsoever.

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What manual bank transfer can and can’t do

What it does:

• Works anywhere. You choose the rails — a domestic transfer, a SEPA payment, a SWIFT wire, whatever your bank offers.
• Costs you nothing on top. No integration fee, no service fee, no percentage. Just whatever your bank charges.
• Collects exactly the details you need, because you decide which fields affiliates fill in.
• Keeps the record straight: who’s owed what, what they submitted, and what’s been paid.
• Needs no setup with anyone else — no account to open, no keys, no verification.

What it can’t do:

• It can’t send money. Every transfer is one you make by hand.
• It can’t check the details are right. Referly stores what the affiliate typed. There’s no validation of an IBAN, no confirmation the account exists.
• It can’t know when a transfer clears. Referly has no view of your bank, so a payout stays open until you say otherwise.
• It can’t run automatically. No schedule will pay these for you.
• It can’t run alongside Wise. More on that below.

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Wise has to be off first

The Manual Bank Account card is greyed out whenever Wise is enabled, with a note explaining that manual bank account isn’t available when Wise is on, because Wise already handles direct bank transfers. If you want to collect bank details and pay by hand, turn Wise off first. If you’d rather have bank transfers sent for you, use Local bank account payouts instead — same destination, no manual work.

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When to use this instead of the other methods

Manual bank transfer makes sense when you have a handful of affiliates, when you’re paying somewhere the other methods don’t reach, when your finance team already runs a payment run you can add to, or when you’re contractually required to pay from a specific account. Once you’re paying more than a few people a month, one of the automated methods will save you real time. See Payout methods.

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Before you start

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Step 1: Turn on Manual Bank Account

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Step 2: Decide what details you need

This is the part worth thinking about before your affiliates start filling forms in. Getting it wrong means chasing people for a missing SWIFT code the week you’re trying to pay them.

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The standard fields

Once an affiliate picks a country, Referly shows the fields that country’s banking system uses — an IBAN for most of Europe, a sort code and account number in the UK, an ACH routing number and account number in the US, a BSB number in Australia, institution and transit numbers in Canada, and bank code or branch code fields elsewhere.

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Add your own fields

If you need something the standard set doesn’t cover, turn on Custom Bank Account Fields in your payout settings and add it. For each field you set:

• Field Title — the label affiliates see, like SWIFT / BIC or Bank Branch Address.
• Placeholder Text — the hint inside the empty box.
• Required field — whether an affiliate can save without it.

A live preview shows how it’ll look. Full instructions are in Custom bank account fields.

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What to collect for common destinations

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Step 3: Get your affiliates to submit their details

Ask them to go to Settings → Payouts → Cash payouts in the affiliate portal and pick Manual Bank Account, described as “Submit bank details for manual transfer outside of Referly”. They choose their Country, then fill in the bank fields for it, plus any custom fields you added. Required fields have to be completed before they can save.

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Pay a batch

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Check who’s missing details

Open the batch. Referly flags affiliates who chose manual bank transfer but haven’t submitted an account number or IBAN. They can’t be paid — chase them or leave them for the next batch. See Payout batches.

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Look at one affiliate’s details

Open any payout to see what that affiliate submitted, under a Bank Account section. Depending on what they gave you, you’ll see rows like Holder, Bank, Account #, Routing #, SWIFT/BIC, IBAN, Sort Code, Branch Code, Institution #, Transit #, BSB, Type, Country, and Address. This is the quickest way to answer one affiliate’s question without downloading anything.

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Export the whole batch

For an actual payment run, open the batch’s Actions menu and choose Export Bank CSV. Select specific payouts first to export only those, or export the lot. The file contains, for each affiliate: their name, email, payout email, the amount and currency, and every bank detail they submitted — account holder, bank name, IBAN, account number, routing number, SWIFT/BIC, sort code, branch code, country, and account type — plus a reference in the form Payout followed by the payout’s ID. That reference is the single most useful column in the file. Use it.

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Make the transfers in your bank

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Mark the batch as paid

Referly has no way of knowing you’ve done any of this. Closing the batch is a manual step. To close out only some of them, select those rows first and use Mark as Paid on the selection instead. You’ll be warned it will mark all the payouts you selected as paid.

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Reconciliation and record-keeping

This method lives or dies on the reference field. A simple routine that works:

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Partial payments and bounced transfers

Some transfers went, some didn’t. Don’t mark the whole batch. Select just the rows that cleared and mark those as paid. The rest stay open, so it’s obvious what’s outstanding. A transfer bounced back. Banks reject payments for a wrong account number, a name that doesn’t match the account, a missing SWIFT code on an international wire, or an account that’s been closed. The money comes back to you, usually minus a fee. When that happens: See Failed payouts for the wider picture.

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What it costs

There’s no Referly fee and no integration fee on this method. What you do pay:

• Your bank’s transfer fee. Often free domestically, and a flat charge per international wire.
• Currency conversion. If you pay in a currency other than your account’s, your bank’s exchange rate applies — usually worse than Wise’s.
• Intermediary bank charges. International wires can pass through correspondent banks that each take a cut, which is why an affiliate sometimes receives less than you sent.
• Rejection fees. Some banks charge for a returned payment.

Decide up front who absorbs these and tell your affiliates. If you’re sending wires to people owed small amounts, the fees can be a meaningful share of the payout — that’s usually the point at which Local bank account payouts becomes cheaper as well as easier.

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Looking after affiliates’ bank details

You’re now holding banking information for everyone in your program. Some practical rules:

• Limit who can see it. Anyone with access to your payouts area can view full bank details. Review who that is.
• Don’t circulate the CSV. Don’t email it, don’t put it in a shared chat, don’t leave it in cloud storage that’s open to the whole company.
• Delete exports when you’re done. Re-export next time rather than keeping old copies around.
• Only collect what you’ll use. Every custom field is more data to look after. Skip anything you don’t need to make the payment.
• Handle changes carefully. If an affiliate emails asking you to change their bank details, verify it’s really them before paying to a new account. This is a common fraud.

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Troubleshooting

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