Many corporations have a Loyalty Rewards programs that turn cash into a form of pseudo credit to be redeemed and spent at their locations on their products.
Some allow you to withdrawal through a series of pre-orders or such, like GameStop;
Some give you extra cash incentives for depositing money that you can’t return, in the hopes that you simply forget that the money is there. For instance double the rewards points for deposits, Starbucks rewards programs are estimated +$200 million dollars annually on forgotten rewards points. There’s an estimated $10 billion plus amount of money being spent on Starbucks Reward points annually, and rising (probably).
Some unscrupulous companies will ding and expire your rewards points that you’ve spent money to get.
Especially those travel hotels, credit card rewards, or even insurance rewards points. Those provide ‘discounts’ for select items and expire. Kind of shit to be honest. But it also incentivizes you to use your points and not hoard em’ like a fucking goblin you are. You’re in a dark cave (this website), you’re definitely a goblin.
Even if you can’t directly withdraw money from a rewards program, you just have to fence the good-gotten goods. Essentially doing a bit of money alchemy to turn useless points into a shitty product to then resale on a secondary market for cash. All dependent on whose willing to pay.
Spend $10 on rewards, get an additional $10 for depositing your initial investment, buy a coffee mug for $16 and sell it on a secondary market for $14. You technically profited $4 with $4 still in rewards. This is a very ineffective but doable form of arbitrage. Ultimately the company that is mass producing coffee mugs for pennies is winning. So do yourself a favor and find a better game.
Point is, Corpos are facilitating cash transfers similar to banks through their rewards program. -And if you’re smart enough, spatial requirements become arbitrary with multi-international-conglomerate corporate rewards points.
As a side note, Video Gaming industry and pay-to-play point system markets are another example of shadow banking similar to the above. Diablo 3’s real money auction house was a taste of wonderful degeneracy. There’s more to be said about the gambling nature and loot boxes and just downright degen-nature of video gaming, but that’s a conversation for another day.
In Closing
Corporations can be facilitated as a middle man for cash transactions and moving money around, kind of like a Pawn Shop. Some corporations, don’t allow withdrawals, resulting in storing of monies and the extra effort of arbitraging alchemical conversions to turn shit reward points into cold hard Fiat Money.
Duh.
*Not Valid Financial, Legal, Life, or Any Advice