How to Get Paid from the Amazon Affiliate Program Using Payoneer

January 7, 2016
Marco Schwartz

The Amazon affiliate program is an amazing way to monetise a niche website, whereas it is for the main source of income of the site, or a nice addition to other sources of income (like digital products). For example, I use it on several of my niche websites to create another source of income along the sale of eBooks. If your website is in the English language, then probably most of your affiliate revenue will come from the US Amazon website.

However, for people not based in the US, it can be a challenge to get paid: Amazon only allows direct deposits to a US bank account. In this article, we are going to see how to use a solution called Payoneer to fully profit from your Amazon affiliate account even if you are based outside of the US. And even if you are in the US, it can be a great way to have a separate account for your Amazon
affiliate revenues. Let’s dive in!

How Payoneer Can Help

If you are using the US Amazon affiliate program and are based outside of the US, you only have two options to get paid: get an Amazon gift card for the US store, or receive a cheque by mail.
When I started out, I chose the cheque option, but it was not great: it took a long time to come, and my bank charged up to $40 per cheque to cash it, along with a very bad exchange rate!
That’s when I discovered Payoneer. It’s a service to receive payments from companies in the US, just like you would have your own US-based bank account. You can then use this money by transferring it back to your bank account in your own country, or by using it with their debit card. In the rest of this article, we are going to see how to open your account & to setup your Amazon affiliate program to receive payments.

By the way, Payoneer now also supports Euro payments (via the SEPA system), and payments in British pounds. So it can be a great way to receive SEPA payments if you are based in the US for example!

Opening Your Payoneer Account

The first step is to sign up for an account at the Payoneer website. It’s completely free, and it is quite fast as well. At the start you will be able to choose between two options:
Just choose what you like best for now, you will be able to use both anyway later. Then, enter your personal details:
After this step, the last thing you will have to do is to confirm your home address. For that, they will send you a letter by mail with a code that you will need to enter in your Payoneer account (along with the debit card if you asked it). After that, you will have full access to Payoneer account:
We are now going to see how to use it for what we created it: received payments.

Using Payoneer

Receiving payments with Payoneer is very simple: you just need to click on “US Payment Service” to access a page with your payment information:
As you can see on this page, this is just like you would have your own bank account in the US! You can then continue to the Amazon affiliate website, and enter this payment information:
Congratulations, you can now receive payments from Amazon affiliates directly on your Payoneer account, and avoid receiving those horrible cheques! From then, you can either directly wire money to your account in your country, or use the debit card linked to your account.
I personally more use the debit card option. I found that it has nasty fees when trying to withdraw money from an ATM, but it’s great to pay things directly in stores. You can for example couple the debit card with TransferWise to automatically pay bills from your Payoneer account!
Have you already used Payoneer or similar services to receive payments from Amazon affiliates? Please share below!