> which make zero financial sense for the consumer

Not in all situations. Because of various cross promotions between car insurance, supermarket and airlines, by using gift cards for groceries I get an effective ~9% discount every time. That really adds up over a year.

For Apple and others, you can use secondary gift card market to get some discounts too, if you wanna risk it.

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nullfield 2 days ago | parent [-]

What kinds of stacked cross-promotions like this exist, and even work out financially for everyone?

	▲	viraptor 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		I don't think they'd work out if everyone used them. It's essentially companies paying for your shopping data. But a) they overpay to incentivise you, b) I'm buying the same boring things on rotation so it's close to useless to them.