Paying affiliates with Wise: the three requirements and how they fail

Wise lets software send transfers from your own account without you entering each payment by hand. Three things still have to be in place: a Business profile, a sufficient balance and, for European accounts, a signing key for strong customer authentication. Any of them can be missing, and each one fails in a different way, at a different moment.

The API token is created on wise.com, in a browser

You connect Wise to Meritt by pasting an API token. The token is created on wise.com, from a browser, not in the mobile app. The path is: Your account, then Integrations and tools, then API tokens. Two-step verification must be enabled on your Wise account.

Wise shows the token only once. Copy it before you leave the page: you will not be able to view it again.

Before saving the token, Meritt checks it by reading the Wise profiles it gives access to. A rejected token is therefore flagged immediately, when you paste it, not on the day of the first payout. This is the first checkpoint, and the only one that costs nothing: if something is wrong at this stage, no affiliate is waiting yet.

The token is encrypted before it is stored. No Meritt screen and no Meritt API returns it, including to you. If you disconnect Wise, the token is deleted.

A Business profile, and nothing else

Meritt accepts only Wise Business profiles. If the token gives access to a personal profile only, the connection is refused, and the message says why: Wise no longer allows transfers to be funded by API from a personal account. No setting in Meritt gets around this rule. The only solution is to open a Business profile with Wise, then create a token that gives access to it.

A single token sometimes sees several profiles, for example a personal profile and one or more Business profiles. In that case, you choose which Business profile pays your affiliates. That choice also determines the balance each transfer will be funded from, which matters for what follows.

Every transfer is funded from your Wise balance

Meritt never charges a card or debits a bank account. Every transfer is funded from the balance of your Wise Business profile, and the money goes directly from your Wise account to the affiliate. Meritt never holds your funds at any point.

Every transfer follows the same order, through the same steps:

• a quote, which sets the amount and the currency;
• a recipient, created or reused for the affiliate;
• the transfer itself;
• the funding, drawn from your Wise balance.

The practical consequence is simple: if the balance in the payout currency is too low, funding fails. There is an optional setting, off by default, that allows Wise to convert. When it is on and the balance in the payout currency is too low, the transfer is funded from your largest other Wise balance. This is a choice to make deliberately: you accept that a conversion happens instead of a failure, and the balance drawn on is not necessarily the one you would have picked.

Each transfer carries an identifier derived from the payout line. If a network outage interrupts the send, resending it cannot pay the affiliate twice. Until the line has been resent, the amount stays reserved and is not offered for payment again, which prevents it from going out a second time by another route.

The signing key for European accounts

For European accounts, Wise requires strong customer authentication at the moment a transfer is funded. Through the API, this is done with a cryptographic signature, not a code sent to your phone.

When you connect Wise, Meritt generates a key pair. It keeps the private key and shows you the public key, which you must upload to your Wise account. When Wise returns its one-time challenge during funding, Meritt signs it with the private key and retries the funding call once.

What you see when funding fails

When funding does not go through, because the balance is too low or because the signature was rejected, Meritt cancels the transfer at Wise. Nothing is sent, and the payout line shows the reason for the failure. No transfer is left pending at Wise, created but never funded.

The two causes are not handled the same way. An insufficient balance is fixed by topping up the Business profile, or by turning on conversion if you accept it. A rejected signature points to the public key: first check that the one Meritt displays is the one uploaded to Wise, on the right profile.

If you do not want to wait, failed lines can be turned into a manual batch in one click. You then pay those affiliates outside Meritt, by whatever method you choose, without re-entering the amounts one by one.

Affiliates who have given only an email address

Many affiliates do not want to enter their bank details in yet another form. If an affiliate has provided only an email address, Meritt creates an email recipient at Wise, and Wise asks the affiliate for their bank details.

Wise does not offer this option for every currency or every route. Where it is not available, the affiliate has to provide their bank details. This is a Wise limitation that Meritt cannot make up for.

Wise recipients are reused for the same affiliate, the same currency and the same address. An affiliate therefore does not receive a new email from Wise every month. If their address changes, however, a new recipient is created, and they will receive a request from Wise again.

After sending: reconciliation and monitoring

A funded transfer is not yet a delivered transfer. Every hour, Meritt reads the status of each transfer at Wise until it has arrived or bounced back. When a transfer bounces back, the affiliate's balance is restored, the sales involved become payable again, a credit note cancels the document issued for that payout, and both you and the affiliate are notified.

Separately, every connected payout account is rechecked every six hours. If an account that was working stops working, for example because the token was revoked on the Wise side, you receive an email. That way you find out before the next payout run rather than during it.

What this requires, and what it does not do

Sending money through PayPal or Wise from Meritt requires the Business plan, for example $99 a month in the United States. The Pro plan, at $49, works with manual payouts: you pay your affiliates outside Meritt, then mark each line as paid.

Meritt does not fund any transfer by card or bank debit, does not hold your money, and cannot create an email recipient where Wise does not offer one. Nor can it verify that your public key is in place at Wise.

That last point is the one that catches people out most. For a European account, everything can look ready at connection, token validated, Business profile chosen, balance topped up, and the first payout can still fail at the signature step. Schedule that first payout for a time when you can go through the lines one by one and fix the key if needed, rather than the day before the date you promised your affiliates.

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