Cash Machine 6#
In the Cash Machine concept, the customer pays upfront for the products sold to the customer before the company is able to cover the associated expenses. This results in increased liquidity which can be used to amortise debt or to fund investments in other areas.
Examples: Iconic Cases
How they do it: Groupon’s customers typically pay for a voucher or coupon upfront directly to Groupon. This voucher or coupon can then be used to get a product or service with the merchant. Upon delivering the service or product, the business gets paid by Groupon.
Learn more about Groupon →
How they do it: Blacksock’s subscribers purchase and pay their sock subscription in advance, allowing the company to use the increased liquidity to finance other areas such as growth.
Learn more about Blacksocks →
How they do it: When a merchant accepts a payment via PayPal (e.g. for his E-Commerce shop), the funds are first collected from the customer’s PayPal balance or credit card. Only after PayPal asserted that the payment is genuine and it received the funds from the customer, the payment is ”deposited” virtually in the merchant’s account. Subsequently, the merchant may then transfer the funds to his regular bank account. Both merchant and customer balances lead to PayPal holding an immense amount of funds ”virtually” on his platform, before the funds are at a later stage liquidated or transferred away from the platform.
Learn more about PayPal →
How they do it: Amazon Web Services offers pricing for it’s computing pricing on an annual, pre-paid schedule. These so-called ”Reserved Instances” provide customers with a significant discount (up to 75%) compared to On-Demand instance pricing.
Learn more about Amazon Web Services →
How they do it: Lufthansa flights are paid right away when they are booked, although the actual flight is in several days, weeks or months time. This allows the company to utilize the liquidity it gets from the prepayments and also finance their capital expensive operations (e.g. plane maitenance).
Learn more about Lufthansa →
Below, the top industries for the pattern "Cash Machine" are displayed, in order to get insights into how this pattern is applied across different industries. We've collected data from 5 firms using this pattern.
Top Industries
27% of firms using pattern
9% of firms using pattern
9% of firms using pattern
All Industries
Below, the pattern "Cash Machine" is analyzed based on co-occurrence, in order to get insights into how this business model pattern is applied in combination with other patterns within the firms we studied.
Top Co-Occurrences
5 pattern co-occurrences
5 pattern co-occurrences
4 pattern co-occurrences