Real people. Real referrals. Guardrails built in.
Word-of-mouth only works when both sides trust it. Here’s every safeguard we run on the platform so your offers can’t be gamed, your customers can’t be spammed, and you’re never left holding the bag.
We watch for bad patterns.
Every transaction is checked against the kinds of patterns that signal collusion or gaming. We flag — we don’t silently block — so legitimate edge cases never lose a sale, and humans review what trips a flag.
Reciprocal referral detection
If two locals start referring each other in a tight loop — A buys via B's link, then B buys via A's link — the pattern lights up an internal review queue. Genuine reciprocity from friends and family is fine; coordinated commission-swapping gets caught quickly.
Self-referral guard
A local can't earn commission on a purchase they made themselves. The system blocks the credit at checkout — your discount still applies, but the commission isn't paid out.
Duplicate-recipient guard on outreach
When a local invites friends to an offer, the system prevents the same email from being hit repeatedly across multiple invites. Your offer can't be used to spam someone's inbox under the cover of multiple senders.
Internal fraud-alert queue
Every flag from the patterns above lands in an admin queue we actively work. Open alerts are reviewed, scoped to the offending users, and resolved before payouts settle when escalation is needed.
We enforce limits on every noisy action.
Rate limits keep one motivated bad actor from drowning the platform — or your customers — in noise. None of these caps hit a normal user; they only bite the kind of automated or repeated activity you wouldn’t want anyway.
Claim creation
A single account can create at most 20 claims per hour. Real buyers never hit this; scripts do.
Offer creation
At most 10 new offers per day per business. Stops accidental or malicious flooding of /shop with junk listings.
Outreach emails
A local can send at most 5 share emails per hour and 15 per day. Your offer can't be turned into a mass-email vector.
Verification submissions
A business can submit identity verification at most 3 times per day, so the admin queue stays focused on real, recent submissions.
Business nudge cooldown
If a buyer asks for an invoice and you haven't responded, they can nudge you — but only after a 24-hour cooldown. No reminder bombs.
We back you up where it counts.
A few safeguards run on your behalf even when nothing is wrong — they prevent the math from ever working against you, and they keep the money flowing the right way.
Commission can never exceed discount
When you set up an offer, the form blocks you from setting a local's commission higher than the buyer's discount. The math always nets out in your favor — by construction, not by hope.
Stripe Connect holds the money — not us
Every payment is split three ways by Stripe at checkout: you (the business) get most of it, the local who referred earns their commission, Piggybak takes a small platform fee. We never hold your cash flow.
Business verification badge
Verified businesses get a badge on their profile and offers. Buyers can tell at a glance who's been through identity review — and you can tell who you're competing with.
You set your own terms — and pause anytime
Discount, commission, redemption rules, refund policy — all yours. Archive an offer and new referrals stop instantly; in-flight purchases complete normally with no clawbacks.
No paid ranking. Ever.
We don't sell visibility. Your offers compete on real referrals and real reach — never on ad spend. The day we'd sell rankings is the day the platform stops working.
What we don’t do yet.
We’d rather be straight about gaps than overclaim. These are the safeguards we’re building toward:
- Total commission caps:today, every transaction is gated by your commission rate — but you can’t yet set a total budget ceiling across an offer. (Coming.)
- Automated chargeback workflows:Stripe handles disputes; we don’t yet auto-reverse the local’s commission when a charge is reversed. We do it manually for now.
- Per-customer purchase caps:you can’t yet limit how many times one buyer can use the same offer. (Easy to add when a real customer asks.)
See something off? Tell us.
If a referral pattern looks fishy or someone’s gaming an offer, drop us a note. A human on our team looks at every report.