Presumably money in the bank = interest. Groupon, it seems, wants to also be a bank. Shouldn't the restaurant owner collect interest as well perhaps. In reality though, can't all this be spelled out in the contract, that would have made it un-ambiguous.
> Our current merchant partner arrangements are structured as either a redemption payment model or a fixed payment model defined as follows:
> Redemption payment model - Under our redemption merchant partner payment model, we collect payments at the time our customers purchase Groupons and make payments to most of our merchant partners at a subsequent date. We utilize this model in most of our international operations as it conforms with the local market practice. Using this payment model, merchant partners are not paid until the customer redeems the Groupon that has been purchased. If a customer does not redeem the Groupon under this payment model, we retain all of the gross billings for the Groupon purchase. The redemption model generally improves our overall cash flow because we do not pay our merchant partners until the customer redeems the Groupon.
> Fixed payment model - Under our fixed merchant partner payment model, we pay our merchant partners in installments over a period of generally sixty days
No one really makes much money on interest anymore. Currently interest rates for short term cash holdings are very, very low everywhere you could park money. It's more about cashflow for Groupon versus actually making money on the float.
