How Referral Schemes Work

Referral schemes simply encourage existing customers of cryptocurrency services, like Exchanges, to recruit their friends and family to become users, in return for a reward both for themselves, and the new customer. They are often called Refer-a-friend schemes for this reason.

The reward can be a fixed payment per user recruited (in crypto or fiat), ongoing commission based on how much customers trade or sometimes discounted use of the service.

Referral schemes are very simple to use, with new customers automatically provided with a referral link or code that they simply share with their friends, along with a persuasive description of the service.. 

Any new customers who create an account using the specific link or code, will trigger a payment to the customer who referred them, so long as they fulfil certain activity criteria. 

This last part is especially important to pay attention to; you are only going to get rewarded for customers who are actively using the service.

Here’s an example from Coinbase:

The referral code you share looks like this: https://www.coinbase.com/join/YOUR_REFERRAL_ID

The criteria:

If your friend visits coinbase.com/trade and initiates 
a buy or sell of $100 USD or more (or 100 USD 
equivalent of your domestic currency) within 180 days 
of opening his or her account, you both will receive 
a 10 USD (or 10 USD equivalent of your domestic 
currency) referral bonus when the order completes. 
Orders can take up to 4 business days to complete.

The Coinbase referral scheme places no limit on the number of customers you can get paid to refer, so your potential to earn simply depends on the effort you are prepared to put in.

Though the reward is in USD or equivalent, you can simply exchange this for crypto in order to build your stack.