Honey finally discloses that it uses affiliate codes now that Google Chrome requires it

Ben Schoon | Mar 12 2025 - 7:35 am PT

After being exposed for some shady practices last year, PayPal’s popular Honey extension has finally been forced to disclose that, yes, it takes advantage of merchant affiliate programs.

Honey has been around for a long time with the promise of finding coupon codes from the web and applying those to your online purchases. While some have known for a while that the extension uses affiliate programs to subsidize that service, a video positioning that practice as “stealing” from online creators turned Honey into a controversial service in late 2024. The same video went on to expose more shady tactics from Honey, such as hijacking affiliate codes even if the extension didn’t provide a coupon or was simply clicked to close its pop-up, as well as Honey working with businesses to limit the number of coupon codes shown to the extension’s users.

Controversy aside, though, Honey mostly concealed that it was operating off of affiliate commissions, but has now finally disclosed that information.

In a recent update to its Chrome Web Store listing, Honey now directly says that “merchants may pay us affiliate commissions” when you use the extension, adding that those are shared with users “in the form of rewards.

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With what is essentially a footnote in the extension’s listing, Honey says:

When you use PayPal Honey, merchants may pay us affiliate commissions. We share those commissions with our users in the form of rewards.

This change comes as Google has implemented a new policy update for the Chrome Web Store that requires extensions to disclose if they use affiliate codes, and also prevents the abuse of that, directly targeting some of Honey’s more controversial tactics.

Google Chrome policy update restricts shady affiliate extensions, like Honey

We’re not sure exactly when this footnote was added, but it wasn’t in place around a month ago. Google’s new policy was just made public on March 11. Rakuten, a similar extension, has also added a similar disclosure in its its Chrome Web Store listing.