Today at the LinkShare Executive Marketing Summit, Stephen Messer, Chairman and CEO of LinkShare, made an announcement that affiliates have been waiting to hear for a long time… affiliates will be able to get consolidated checks and ACH (Automated Clearing House aka Direct Deposit).
Here’s a timeline of events for the rollout of the consolidated payments and ACH:
January 18
The big announcement.
February 28 through April
“Athena” launches, which will be an initiative where all LinkShare affiliates will have to re-register with LinkShare to confirm that they pass OFAC, and are indeed who they claim to be.
This is a very interesting and commendable development. OFAC is administered and enforced by the US Department of the Treasury, and it’s a process for determining whether somebody applying to be an affiliate is violating economic and trade sanctions based on US foreign policy and national security goals against targeted foreign countries, terrorists, international narcotics traffickers, and those engaged in activities related to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
January through March
Implementation of “Athena” and merchant rollout.
April
The launch of consolidated checks for affiliates with a threshold of $1.
May
The first consolidated checks mailed.
Note, the consolidated checks are not required for all merchants. They are an option, at least for now.