CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) is an affiliate payment model in which the operator pays a fixed one-time fee for each referred player who completes a qualifying action — almost always a first deposit, often with a minimum amount ("baseline").

Typical iGaming CPAs range widely by market and vertical, from approximately tens to several hundred euros per depositor. Because the affiliate is paid regardless of what the player does afterward, CPA shifts all quality risk to the operator — which shapes how deals must be structured:

• Qualification criteria — minimum deposit, wagering activity, or retention over N days before the CPA triggers;
• Anti-fraud clawbacks — the right to reverse payments on duplicate accounts, chargebacks or incentivized traffic;
• Caps — monthly CPA volume limits while a new partner's traffic quality is proven;
• Geo pricing — per-market rates reflecting local LTV.

The commercial test is simple: CPA must sit comfortably below predicted depositor LTV for that market and source, or the channel destroys value at scale.

Why it matters: CPA is where affiliate fraud concentrates, because the payout is immediate and behavior-independent. Automated qualification checks and fraud screening at the tracking layer — standard in modern affiliate software — are what make CPA deals safe to scale.