Apple has notified members of the iTunes Affiliate program that it has opened up a new payment option for partners. Rather than sending money directly to your bank, iTunes Affiliate commissions can now instead be paid directly as iTunes Store credit. This means the payments are channeled as redemption codes to top up the credit on an Apple ID account, to buy apps, music, or pay for iCloud Storage.

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The affiliate program is available to registered partners and shares a small cut of iTunes content revenue with the partners, if customers buy through the special affiliate links.

Typically, once enough money accrues on the affiliate account, partners then get the money sent to their bank account via electronic transfer. With this new offering, partners can instead get paid entirely in iTunes credit (like this one for Apple Music subscriptions).

Dollar for dollar, the same amount that would have been paid to the bank is instead converted to credit. As there are no monetary benefits to doing this, it’s unclear why partners would opt to use this method, but there it is.

The iTunes Store Credit payment option is currently only available for purchases made in USD or yen, which means accrued commissions from the United States and Japanese storefronts. Partners can enable the payment method from their affiliate dashboard.

The affiliate program last hit headlines in May, when Apple cut the commission rate of In-App Purchases to 2.5%.

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