Referral commission
Referral commission is the share of a referred user's trading fees that an exchange pays to the referrer. It is the funding source behind every rebate and cashback program.
Exchanges compete for order flow, and paying for referrals is their standard acquisition channel: whoever brings a trader receives an ongoing percentage of that trader's fees. The percentage varies by program and partner level, and the payments continue for as long as the referred account trades.
Follow the money and rebate services stop looking mysterious. The commission exists whether or not you receive anything from it — register with a random code and 100% of it stays with the code's owner. A rebate platform simply splits its commission with you, returning most of it as payback and keeping a margin as revenue. Nothing is added to your fees to fund this; the exchange pays the same commission either way.
This also explains why rebate rates differ per exchange: the commission terms differ, so the amount available to share differs. loweef publishes the resulting total rate per partner (50–67%) rather than advertising a single number that only applies to the best case.
Where rebate money comes from →