Spendable Balance Rewards

Twitch's Spendable Balance now has a new Reward Balance mechanism that offers cashback on purchases. The earned cashback goes into a new wallet called your Reward Balance, which accrues based on Spendable Balance purchases and possibly other ways to spend on the platform. From there, you can use your Reward Balance the same way you would use your Spendable Balance. Twitch is experimenting, so some users may be offered a higher percentage in Reward Balance (10%) if they spend more than $10 in a single Spendable Balance transaction (ie., buying Bits, gifting 5+ Subs, etc.)

Context:

Spendable Balance is Twitch's internal payment system that, rather than paying creators cash, lets them re-spend their earned money within Twitch. The upside is that it unlocks 'stuck' balances below Twitch's payout threshold ($50) for users who once streamed but have now quit. The downside is that Twitch takes a second cut from the same money - once when you received it, and a second time when you spend it on Twitch.

My Thoughts:

The rewarding feeling of seeing a cash deposit in your bank is crucial as a new creator. It's seeing the fruit of your labour, and it is very motivating. So, I generally don't think Spendable Balance is good for creators UNLESS they are quitting streaming and want to use up that money - then go for it. It also offered little reason to use it versus spending on your own credit card (and earning cashback/purchase protection). So, it's good to see them try to address that lack of value.

The 5% cashback is the bare minimum, though, considering Twitch saves ~5% in processing fees this way anyway, so the reward should be 10%+ without needing to hit a spending threshold. Especially considering the Reward Balance can, once again, only be spent on Twitch - so a domino effect of encouraging spending more and more. But at least it's something.

Check out the conversation about this on Twitter, Bluesky, or Threads.