Most mobile teams have "add a referral program" somewhere on the roadmap. It looks small: a code, a share button, a reward. Then someone starts building it, and it turns into four separate projects.
1. Attribution across an install
On the web, a referral link carries its code all the way to signup. On mobile there is an app store in the middle. Your friend taps the link, lands in the store, installs, opens the app for the first time, and the code is gone.
Android has an answer: the Play Install Referrer hands the app whatever was attached to the store link. iOS has no equivalent, so you combine universal links for people who already have the app, a copy-and-paste step for people who do not, and manual code entry as the fallback. Each path needs its own handling and its own testing on real devices.
2. Store rules
Apple's guideline 3.1.1 means a referral code cannot simply unlock paid features inside an iOS app. The reward has to go through a path the store allows: an Apple offer code, a promotional entitlement granted on the server, a discounted in-app purchase, or cash paid outside the store. Google Play has its own limits on promo codes. Neither store allows rewards for ratings or reviews.
None of this is hard once you know it. Finding out at App Review is the expensive way to learn it.
3. Rewards that are safe to pay
A reward is money or something worth money, so it has to be right. That means holding it until the refund window has passed, capping it per person, never paying twice when a webhook is delivered twice, and taking it back when the purchase is refunded. Cash rewards add tax paperwork once a recipient earns enough in a year.
4. Fraud
The first people to find a referral program are often the ones referring themselves. Self-referral, bursts of signups from one device, and refund-after-reward all need rules before launch, not after the first bad month.
The screen is the easy part
The part everyone pictures, the referral screen itself, is the smallest piece. It is also the piece teams want to change most often, and on mobile every change is a release.
That is the idea behind ReferralPanda: the four hard parts handled once, and a referral screen you configure in a dashboard and publish without shipping an app update. If that is on your roadmap, join the waitlist or apply as a design partner.