I'm still not sure where the money for this comes ...

I'm still not sure where the money for this comes from, but as a customer it works great! The coupons are big enough to actually drive you into a store or restaurant, with no minimums (except usually alcohol doesn't count for restaurants). So far the businesses have all happily honored the Nift coupons, even when the staff didn't immediately recognize what they were. We used Nifts for restaurants and even a liquor store there is NO way we would have stumbled upon ourselves, much less gone into, so the concept works great. Plus, Nift keeps giving me additional gifts, just like a good drug dealer, to keep me trying new places. It'll be good when the network near me expands a bit.