We have not seen it reported this way yet - for every 5 day period Wal-Mart can delay the use of it's gift cards, it would generate over $1 million in internal cash flow.
It's simple, math.
CNN has previously reported that sales of gift cards in the U.S. would be $26.3 BILLION this year.
CNBC has previously reported (in it's documentary on Wal-Mart), that it generates more than 10% of U.S. retail sales. We'll use 10% for this calculation, and assume that Wal-Mart would have a similiar percentage of U.S. gift card sales
The current 90 day Treasury Bill rate is 2.85%
There are 365 days in a year.
(26.3 X .1) X (.0286/365) = $205,479 per day in interest.
WOW !!
Why am I taking the time to report this? I got a Wal-Mart gift card for Christmas!
I went there on Wednesday to buy some RW DVD's with it. I got in line to checkout. Word was passed in these loooong lines that if you were trying to pay with a gift card - they weren't working. I was pissed!
A nice older gentleman in front of me, speculated on how much Wal-Mart would benefit if this was a system wide "failure".
When I got home I decided to spend 5 minutes resaerching this. With the miracle that is Google, I had my answer is less than that time!
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