Per referral, not per signup
The distinction matters because it changes who the offer is for.
Coinbase and Gemini run new-user offers: you open an account, do something, get paid. Kraken's headline programme is a referral programme, which pays the existing customer for bringing others in.
The published structure pays a fixed amount for each qualifying friend, reported as $75 each, up to a maximum of 20 successful referrals. That is where the "up to $1,500" figure comes from.
Read it correctly and it is a reasonable per-unit payment with a sensible cap. Read it the way it is usually presented — as though $1,500 were available to a new customer — and it is wildly misleading. Twenty people have to open accounts, fund them from a bank and trade before anybody sees that number.
Divide the headline by the cap
Whenever a referral programme quotes a large number, look for the per-referral figure and the maximum count. Dividing one by the other tells you what a single introduction is worth, which is the only number relevant to a normal person.
The qualifying conditions
Kraken's conditions are stricter than most, and each one closes a specific loophole.
The referred person must deposit fiat from a bank account. Transferring crypto in from elsewhere does not qualify, however large the amount.
A minimum trade requirement applies, and this is where people get caught: fiat-to-stablecoin trades do not count. Depositing dollars and buying USDC will not qualify. The purchase has to be into a non-stablecoin asset.
Attribution must precede the account. Universal across the category, and unrecoverable if missed. Our bonuses page treats this as the single most common way exchange promotions are lost.
None of these are hidden. They are in the programme terms, and the reason they surprise people is that the aggregator pages quoting the headline figure rarely mention them.
Why the conditions exist
Worth a short explanation, because understanding the logic makes every other programme easier to read.
An exchange pays a referral fee to acquire a customer, not a registration. The conditions are all designed to distinguish the two.
A bank deposit proves a real banking relationship and brings new money onto the platform. Somebody transferring existing crypto in, trading it once and leaving has cost the exchange money without bringing anything. A non-stablecoin trade requirement pushes past the cheapest possible qualifying action — buying a dollar-pegged token is close to a no-op, and it would be the obvious way to farm the programme at minimum cost.
Seen that way the terms are not obstructive. They are the exchange declining to pay for activity that does not benefit it, which is what any business would do.
On "Kraken promo codes"
A large volume of searches looks for a Kraken promo code specifically, and the honest answer is the same one from our main promo codes page.
Exchange discount codes — the retail kind, where a string knocks a percentage off — barely exist in crypto. Exchanges compete through fee tiers and volume discounts, not coupons. What exists are referral links, and most sites listing "codes" are wrapping those links.
If you do want to use one, the safe method avoids the link entirely: type kraken.com into the address bar yourself, then enter any referral identifier in the field during signup. Same attribution, none of the phishing exposure that comes from clicking an unknown redirect. Our safety guide explains why counterfeit exchange pages buy search advertising specifically for these queries.
A realistic expectation
For most people reading this, the referral programme is worth somewhere between nothing and the value of one or two introductions.
That is not a criticism. A programme that pays a fair amount per genuine customer, caps itself sensibly, and refuses to pay for farmed signups is a well-designed programme. It is simply not a source of income unless you have an audience, in which case you are an affiliate rather than a customer and different rules apply.
The thing that should drive your choice of exchange remains what it always is: whether it is licensed where you live, what it charges on spreads and withdrawals, and whether it lists what you want to buy. Our US page covers how to verify the first of those on a regulator's own register in about two minutes.
The pattern to carry forward
Kraken's programme is unusually transparent about its cap and its conditions, which makes it a useful reference point. When you see a competitor advertising a number ten or twenty times larger with no cap mentioned and no conditions listed, the difference is not generosity.
Our offshore exchange page takes that comparison apart properly.