I’m building a Shopify app for an affiliate marketing SaaS and trying to understand whether our billing model would comply with Shopify App Store requirement 1.2 around Shopify Billing API / Managed Pricing.
The Shopify app would be used for:
- Syncing Shopify products into our platform
- Tracking product/order data for attribution
- Supporting discounts
- Tracking refunds/cancellations
- Confirming affiliate-driven sales
We are not a customer-facing marketplace or sales channel. Customers still buy directly from the merchant’s Shopify storefront. Our platform is for merchants and promoters/affiliates.
The billing model we are considering:
- Merchant signs up for our platform.
- Merchant connects their Shopify store.
- Merchant creates a campaign and sets a promoter commission, for example 20%.
- Promoter joins the campaign and shares a tracking link.
- Customer buys a $100 product on the merchant’s Shopify store.
- Merchant funds the $20 promoter commission.
- Our platform deducts a service fee from the promoter’s earned commission before payout, for example 15%.
- Promoter receives $17.
- Our platform keeps $3.
So the merchant is not paying us a separate platform fee or app fee. The merchant only funds the promoter commission they agreed to pay. Our fee is taken from the promoter’s earnings before payout.
The core question:
Would Shopify likely view this as compliant because the Shopify merchant is not being charged a separate app/platform fee, or would Shopify still consider the merchant-funded commission flow an “app charge” that must go through Shopify Billing API?
Also, are there existing affiliate apps using a similar structure where the app monetizes from affiliate/promoter earnings rather than charging the merchant directly?
Not looking for legal advice, just trying to understand how Shopify app developers would think about this before we finalize the billing architecture.